Thread: Petition Legislature to allow DEQ to declare oxbows "public"

In the last 6 months, the public has lost access to at least 2 significant public water bodies in Mississippi. Flower Lake in Tunica County and Albemarle Lake in Warren County. Rumor has it that the ramp on Chotard Lake is next. All of these lakes are oxbow lakes, once channels of the MS River. The only access to these two lakes was in the form of privately owned ramps, both of which have changed hands recently and the public no longer has access through them. It is not the new landowners' fault, it is just how things played out and the public took the loss.

Imagine what would happen if the other private-pay ramps were closed on our MS oxbows. Horn Lake has only one access via the pay-ramp at Lakeview. Tunica Lake only has pay ramps. Old River at Stovall has one public ramp, built with public funds, but access has been limited because the ramp is only accessible via the private MS River levee. The list goes on and on. Lake Jackson, Bee Lake, Little Eagle, Wolf Lake, Eagle Lake, Lake George, Lake Lee, Lake Ferguson, Lake Whittington, Roebuck Lake, Swan Lake, Sixmile Lake, Moon Lake, DeSoto Lake....etc. Thousands of acres of public water are only accessible through a select few pay-ramps. If these ramps change hands, or the leases on the public ramps expire and are not renewed, we will see increasingly more public water become unaccessible.

There are hundreds of oxbow lakes in the Delta, ranging in size from 25-30 acres to 5,000 acre oxbows such as Tunica and Lake Washington. If you will read and study the information out there, such as Supreme Court decisions and Attorney General opinions, you will see that oxbows are considered public. However, the MDEQ, which has been given authority to list public streams in the state based on average yearly flow, has not been given the authority to designate non-flowing waters as public.

We desperately need a law on the books, or an amendment to the public water statute, MS Code 51-1-4, that will designate oxbows as public water bodies alongside our flowing waters. MDEQ has a list of all flowing waters in the state that have been deemed public. There is no oxbow on this list, including the many oxbows we all regularly hunt and fish.

If you are concerned about this, please sign your name and town below. If you want to read up on the court decisions and opinions, there is a sticky on the mdwfp.com fishing forum. We are looking for 1,000 signatures. Please contact your hunting/fishing friends and let them know. One day we may all be forced to hunt/fish public land, but what will we do if we can no longer access our public oxbows?

Thank you,
RR

I may not fish these lakes, but I'll sure support making it available for ya'll.....

Randall Bloodworth
Grenada, Ms.