WHO WILL PAY FOR UPGRADE OF LEVEE?

SCOTT CITY -- Who will pay the cost of improvements the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to make along the 23-mile levee that protects much of Scott and Mississippi counties will be the subject of a meeting today at the SEMO Port Authority.

Scott County Presiding Commissioner Bob Kielhofner says the Corps promised last year that it was going to make repairs to the levees at no cost to the counties. Now, he said, they're asking the counties to help out.

"This project is going to require a heck of a lot of money and effort," Kielhofner said. "We haven't got the kind of money to participate in something like that."

The Corps' Mississippi River Commission is hosting the 8:30 a.m. meeting aboard the boat Mississippi, which is docked at the port. It is the commission's first stop on its annual high-water inspection trip.

Major General Robert B. Flowers, commander of the lower Mississippi Valley Corps Division and designated president of the Mississippi River Commission, will present a State of the Valley report before opening the floor to local participants.

Kielhofner said the Corps had promised last fall to shore up the levee, which stretches from Commerce in Scott County to Birds Point in Mississippi County. He said it will take about a million cubic inches of dirt to top off the levee. The Corps has also promised to build about 200 relief wells at the base of the levee to prevent erosion and lessen seep water.

Kielhofner said the Corps stated it would do the work with full federal funding but now is asking Levee District #2 to chip in. He said the levee district collects $3,800 a year in taxes from residents who live "within the shadow" of the levee. He said that money goes to maintaining the levee road and that the district doesn't have the means to appropriate the money the Corps is suggesting.

Lloyd Smith, a member of U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson's staff, will represent her at the meeting. He said Emerson, R-Mo., is asking the Corps to fund the project completely through federal funds and to start working on it this year.

Smith said the Corps started talking about improving the levee in 1993. The Commerce-Birds Point Levee is part of a chain of levees that stretch to New Orleans. The Corps did some work in 1995 to cap about 10 miles of the levee when the floodwaters came too close to the top that year.

Smith said the levee needs to be broadened as well as heightened.

He said improvements funded by FEMA money on the Miller City levee, known as the Len-Small Levee, in Illinois is putting pressure on the Missouri levee.

"If it was federal dollars that caused the problem it ought to be federal dollars that fixes it," he said.

Smith said the Corps has assured him it can respond to an emergency situation if problems arise with the levee before repairs can be completed. If the Commerce-Birds Point Levee fails it would flood about 125,000 acres of farmland, displace several hundred people and make interstates 55 and 57, and Highway 60 impassible, he said.

"If we happen to lose that part of the levee then the river would come through that area all the way to the Sikeston bridge and would not be recaptured by the river until Helena, Ark." Smith said.

He said the Corps' initial cost estimates put the levee work at more than $5 million. He said it is asking Levee District #2 to purchase land at the base of the levee to allow workers to widen the base.

Smith said he's also going to make sure the Corps has no plans to enact a floodway measure near New Madrid at this time. The floodway plan is a last-ditch effort in which the Corps would open a levee near New Madrid to take pressure off rising waters near Cairo, Ill. But with the Ohio River falling and the Mississippi at a reasonable flood stage, Smith said he sees no need to open the levee.

He said the last time the Corps had to resort to this plan was in 1937.