MISSISSIPPI LEVEL NEARS 5-YEAR LOW

The Mighty Mississippi River has been looking a little less mighty lately as the river's depth has dropped to one of its lowest levels in the past five years.

The river's decline of recent weeks may hit bottom Saturday at 11.8 feet. Sunday's stage reflected an increase of six inches to 12.4 feet.

The National Weather Service in St. Louis said that trend should continue, with the river reaching 14.5 feet by Tuesday.

Dan Overbey, executive director for the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority, said stages lower than eight or nine feet can cause significant problems. But even depths of less than 10 feet can be dangerous if there has been a larger amount of sand and silt built up along the river's bottom.

"So far, we haven't had any complaints from the tenants at the port," Overbey said. If the river gets low enough, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will dredge the channel.

Lt. Mark Emmons, chief of port operations for the U.S. Coast Guard in Paducah, Ky., said the Corps will guarantee river travel at nine feet. The Coast Guard has been patrolling between Cape Girardeau and the Thebes Bridge because of the shallow waters.

"We've been keeping an eye on it," Emmons said. "It's not at that stage where things are hazardous."

Emmons said the Coast Guard has been taking readings and the Corps is scheduled to bring a boat through in the next couple weeks for a survey of its own.

"We've had some vessels ground," Emmons said. "We'll put out an advisory if we feel that it is hazardous for anything over a nine-foot draft to travel the river."

Emmons said he feels the river will get a bump up from last week's rains. "I think the river will come back up," he said.

Overbey said the Corps typically has to dredge the river once a year because of the enormous runoff. The engineers were expecting the river to drop, and then rise to a safe level before winter, and then drop off again gradually. The Corps is scheduled to dredge closer to winter.

"We had a fair amount of flooding earlier this year," Overbey said. "It would be odd if it dropped really low after that, but I'm not saying it won't happen."

Sunday's level is one of the lowest for this date, matched only by a depth of 12.2 feet in 1994 and 13.3 feet in 1991.