Residents and business owners continue to battle flooding with sandbags, closures

Lois Hogan checks on the rising floodwaters Wednesday at her property located at 1006 Geneva St. The property was recently sold.
Lois Hogan checks on the rising floodwaters Wednesday at her property located at 1006 Geneva St. The property was recently sold.

Residents and business owners all across Jefferson City continued to deal with flooding Wednesday, but Turkey Creek Golf Center had the unusual problem during a flood of having to keep its grass watered.

Turkey Creek owner Danny Baumgartner said Wednesday that one of the most difficult things about the flooding situation was keeping water running to the greens - or else the grass would dry out in the sun - but said the pump system set up to address that issue isn't working.

"I'm going to be closed down for a while. I've never seen the water stay up like this," Baumgartner said of the flooding that in other parts of the course has filled the basement of the clubhouse with what he guessed was about 4 feet of water.

He said the main floor of the clubhouse and other buildings at the course have stayed dry. Everything had been moved out of the card shed, just in case; the shed was built at a level to stay dry in a 60-year flood.

He added that the mini-golf course was built for a 100-year flood, and other buildings are a foot above a 500-year flood.

Baumgartner said he's had 10-12 people at times helping to sandbag.

He said water coming down the Missouri River from releases by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers further north has not helped the situation - "that just threw a lot of water on us" - but, "you just battle through it."

Across the Missouri in downtown Jefferson City, Theresa Echelberry - a front desk assistant manager at Capitol Plaza Hotel and Convention Center - said the hotel is open, despite the limited parking available on site due to flood waters that inundated the building's underground garage over Memorial Day weekend and that have risen over many surface lot spaces.

Echelberry said the hotel can use nearby state parking after 5 p.m. until 6:30 a.m. on weekdays, and those spaces are open to be used on the weekends.

A staff member at the front desk of Baymont by Wyndham Jefferson City on West Miller Street said that hotel is also open.

There, guests may access the hotel's rear parking lot and entrance by taking Broadway to an alleyway across from Schroeder Way. Phoenix Home Care's lot is also open.

Other businesses in the area, though - Arris' Bistro and Initially Yours - posted to their Facebook pages Tuesday that they had to close because of rising waters that blocked access.

Arris' Bistro posted it would be closed until further notice, but would post as soon as possible when it could re-open.

Initially Yours' post stated, "We will play it day by day. Please call the store at 573-556-8293 to see if we're open before coming this week."

A voicemail message reached by calling Red Wheel Bike Shop owner Nick Smith on Wednesday informed callers that the business was also closed, and the hope is "to open as soon as river levels drop."

Washington Park Ice Arena closed Tuesday and remained closed Wednesday due to flooding.

While water surrounded the ice arena, Jefferson City Parks, Recreation and Forestry Director Todd Spalding said, water had not entered the building as of Wednesday evening.

For the second day in a row, Capital Arts closed its doors due to flooding, Capital Arts Executive Director Leann Porrello said. She added the Capital Arts parking lot still had some water in it and the road was blocked off.

Porrello said she hoped Capital Arts would reopen today.

Jefferson City Operations Division Director Britt Smith confirmed Kansas Street, between Missouri Boulevard and Myrtle Avenue, was closed due to flooding.

On Geneva Street, Smith said flooding increased slightly.

He added that residents called the city for additional sandbags, which the city delivered Wednesday.

At 1006 Geneva St., realtor Lois Hogan took a minute Wednesday to observe the floodwater - which she showed through pictures on her phone that it had risen probably a couple feet since May 27.

At that time, water was barely lapping at the shed in the backyard, but on Wednesday, the water was above at least one layer of the sandbags at the home's backdoor to its lower level.

Hogan said volunteers from addiction recovery homes for men and women had placed the sandbags May 23.

Up the street at 916 Geneva, Randy Fischer said Wednesday that he did not yet have water in his basement, but that would happen if the water rose another 7-8 inches vertically and another 10-15 feet horizontally in his backyard.

Fischer said the water had come up 3-4 inches in the last couple days, though the level fluctuates some.

He's lived there since 1989, so he recalled the Flood of 1993, when the water was much higher than it is now - up to his front door.

He said in this flood he's sandbagged, but it was mostly a "just kind of wait and see deal" at that point Wednesday.

The Missouri River at Jefferson City was at about 33 feet on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, and was forecast to decrease to about 32 feet by late afternoon today.

John Remus, chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, said in a news release from the Corps on Wednesday that "System releases from Gavins Point Dam are currently 75,000 cfs, which is more than twice the average release for this time of the year. We will maintain Gavins Point releases at this rate to continue evacuating water from Oahe and Fort Randall, which have used much of their respective flood storage."

The Corps' news released added, "May runoff in the upper basin was 8.9 million acre feet, which is 267 percent of average May runoff was the second highest on record, only surpassed by 2011's 9.2 (million acre-feet) The high May runoff increased the 2019 upper basin runoff forecast to 50 million acre-feet. If realized, this runoff total would be the second highest runoff in 121 years of record-keeping, only surpassed by 2011."