By JIM SUHR
Associated Press
SIKESTON, Mo. (AP) - The Army Corps of Engineers will wait until this weekend to decide whether it is necessary to punch a massive hole in a levee to protect an upstream Illinois town from the rising Mississippi River, a regional spokesman said Wednesday.
The corps has said it may have to blow holes, perhaps using explosives, in the Birds Point levee in southeast Missouri's Mississippi County to ease rising waters near the 2,800-resident Illinois town of Cairo (KAY'-roh), which sits near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
Missouri has filed a federal lawsuit to block the effort because it would swamp farmland. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Cape Girardeau.
But corps spokesman Bob Anderson told The Associated Press that even if a judge gives the go-ahead, the agency cautiously will wait until it gets a better forecast of the river crests to see if the breach is necessary to relieve pressure on Cairo's levees - or if conventional flood-fighting efforts such as sandbagging could suffice.
The National Weather Service said the Ohio at Cairo as of midday Wednesday was 58.14 feet and was expected to reach 61.5 feet by Sunday in the city that has a 64-foot downtown floodwall. The forecast high-water mark would eclipse the record 59.5-foot level reached there in 1937.
The decision about whether to bust a hole in the Missouri levee will be dictated by "when it gets to a critical point - the river reaching 61 feet and the chance the river will continue to rise, threatening all of the levee system and thousands of homes and people," Anderson said.
"One of the most important things is that the decision has not been made to go all the way with the explosives," Anderson added while flying to southeast Missouri from his office in Vicksburg, Miss. "If we're given permission (by a judge) to continue, Sunday would be a critical point when we'd have a more accurate idea of the forecast."
Missouri government leaders argue the levee's destruction would flood up to 130,000 acres of land - an area stretching 30 miles north to south and as much as eight to 10 miles wide at certain points.
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster says floodwaters would leave a layer of silt on farmland that could take a generation to clear and also could damage 100 homes. And Missouri's governor, Democrat Jay Nixon, has said the corps is "trying to solve the entire watershed pressure on the back of Missouri farmers and Missouri communities" and should instead explore other methods of relieving pressure on the levees.
Cairo's mayor, Judson Childs, endorses the plan for the intentional levee breach, saying it puts people's lives ahead of farmland. On Tuesday, while confident about the sturdiness of the levees surrounding Cairo, Childs publicly asked the city's residents to voluntarily evacuate, saying "I don't want a mass exodus out of here" if the levees fail.
Another corps spokesman, Jim Pogue, said Tuesday that the agency would monitor river levels in the area and intentionally break the levee if it became convinced the rising water would overtop the levee for a significant amount of time or break it. Much of the decision to breach the levee with explosives, he said, hinges on whether the levee is apparently going to break on its own.
Equipment was being sent to the levee on barges accompanied by a towboat, but corps officials have refused to be specific about that equipment except to say there would be explosives.
If a decision is made to breach the levee, Pogue said, the tiny town of Pinhook, with a population of about 50 people, will have to be evacuated.