There was snow on the ground when Woody Sadler and his wife, Virgie, moved into their new home on North Spanish Street in January 1996.

"At least it wasn't water," Woody Sadler joked.

The Sadlers' old house at 1407 N. Water was purchased under Cape Girardeau's flood buyout program. Funded by the state and federal governments at $2,490,585, the program is winding to a close.

"We're doing our last phase of asbestos removal, and we're going to be awarding the last bids for demolition," said Ken Eftink, who oversees Cape Girardeau's buyout program.

The last of the houses damaged by the floods of 1993 and 1995 should be torn down by the end of June, Eftink said.

In Cape Girardeau, 151 homes were affected by the flood. Of those 114 were designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as eligible for the buyout program.

The city has acquired 94 of the eligible homes. The remaining 20 are not participating.

Thirty-three flood-damaged homes not designated by FEMA for the buyout program were demolished through a 1994 block grant and through the South Sprigg Street elevation program. Four homes in the Meadowbrook neighborhood weren't eligible for the buyout program. The city also acquired 16 vacant lots through the buyout program.

"There are a couple we're not able to get titles to because we can't locate the owners, and apparently neither can the tax collector because there are back taxes owed on them," Eftink said.

So the city will wait until the county tax auction this summer and buy the properties then.

Twenty-six of the 94 houses acquired by the city are waiting to be demolished. Asbestos removal is under way on 20 of those homes.

It's still possible the city could get a few last-minute requests from property owners who want to participate in the buyout program, Eftink said.

"This is our last call for anyone who wants to participate," he said. "They would need to notify us within the next two weeks or so."

Applicants must own one of the homes originally designated by FEMA for the program.

The aim of the buyout program is simple, Eftink said. It is cheaper to purchase flood-prone houses one time than to keep paying for damages incurred after every flood.

After the 1993 flood, FEMA reported there were 283 claims for flood insurance reimbursement on 86 properties within the flood area -- an average of 3.3 claims per property.

"That further proved that we had the same structures flooding over and over again," Eftink said.

For the Sadlers, the buyout has meant moving into a home on higher, dryer ground. Now living at 1620 N. Spanish, Sadler doesn't expect to see floodwaters creep up toward his house any time soon.

"It's a nice, nice place," he said.

During the 1993 flood, the water in the Sadlers' yard was 37 inches deep, he said. "We lived there 44 years before we ever got any water at all," he said.

Volunteers built a wall of sandbags to keep the water out of the house, and the Sadlers set up a series of pumps to handle the water that seeped through the sandbags.

The family monitored the pumps day and night, Sadler said. "Sometimes they'd kick off and we'd have to reset them."

They wouldn't have been able to sell the house, he said. "We put it up for sale, but we didn't want to lie to anybody. We wanted to make sure they knew it was a flood plain," he said.

But then they learned banks wouldn't have financed the purchase of a home in a flood plain anyway, he said.

"I know one thing: I got tired of sandbagging," he said. "You got a lot of help sandbagging, but there was no help when it was time to take them away."

The buyout program has changed two of the city's oldest neighborhoods.

In the Red Star neighborhood, 63 homes were purchased for demolition. The neighborhood grew up around the Roberts, Johnson and Rand Shoe Co., which opened in 1907. The plant was eventually bought by International Shoe Co. and then Florsheim and shut down in 1984. Demolition began in 1989.

The city also purchased the last 13 homes left in Smelterville, Eftink said.

Several businesses are still left there, including Consolidated Grain, Kasten Block plant and the city's wastewater treatment plant.

The city is trying to decide what to do with the vacant areas left in the Red Star area, Eftink said.

Federal guidelines restrict how the property can be used. Buyout land has to be maintained for use by the public.

Neighborhood parks, community gardens and a recreational vehicle park are all possibilities, he said.

"Hopefully, what we do in that area will enhance the value of the homes that remain in the neighborhood," Eftink said.

Home values in the area were starting to go down because of flood-damaged properties, he said. Tearing down those properties should help stabilize values of the remaining homes.