Although a developers’ plan to dam the Pearl River and create a 4,500-acre lake resort in Jackson, Miss., is dead, St. Tammany Parish Council members want to ensure it’s never revived again.

In a resolution sent to nine state and federal governmental organizations, including the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, council members said if the plan were ever realized, St. Tammany’s downstream wildlife would wither away.

The Two Lakes Plan has a “detrimental effect” on “down river ecology and economic development,” the council argued. The plan was the 10-year brainchild of John McGowan of McGowan Working Partners in Jackson, Miss. He proposed damning the river in his hometown to build the lake and 700 acres of premium lakeshore development. The plan has been proposed in various forms several times in the past 10 years.

“It’s a well thought out, realistic, cost-effective plan for all of the Jackson area to finally realize its full potential for economic development, infrastructure enhancement and flood control,” McGowan argued. “And, it can be quickly built without any tax money.”

But the Jackson, Miss.-based Rankin-Hinds Levee Board didn’t agree. It stopped the development in a March vote, 4-3.

The St. Tammany Parish Council agreed recently with the Levee Board’s decision and offered the following laundry list of cons to top state and federal leaders if the plan was ever proposed again:

• Eradication of 4,900 acres of wetlands and more than 3,4000 acres of forest if the Pearl River’s flow is stopped or reduced.

• A plummet in sales for Louisiana swamp tour industry.

• The lives of the ringed saw-back turtle, Gulf sturgeon and inflated heel splitter mussel would be jeopardized.

• Reduced flow and lower oxygen content would also endanger the Pearl River Basin, Pearl River Wildlife Management area and Honey Island Swamp.