HIGHWAY 51 STILL MAIN CONCERN FOR STATE

Highway 51 at McBride still looks like a lake and the Chester, Ill., bridge across the Mississippi River remains closed to traffic.

"The bridge is sitting there high and dry," said Freeman McCullah, District 10 engineer for the Missouri Highway and Transportation Department in Sikeston.

The problem is that motorists can't get there from the Missouri side. The McBride area of Perry County is still under water, the result of a levee break on July 25.

"Highway 51 is the most critical thing we have going right now," McCullah said Thursday. "We still have 10 to 12 feet of water over it at McBride."

McCullah said it would probably be at least mid-September before floodwaters will recede to the point that the highway can be reopened to traffic. Even then, a rise in the river level could flood the area again until the break in the levee is repaired, he said.

With Highway 51 closed to traffic, those commuting between Perryville and Chester have had to make a lengthy detour via the Mississippi River bridge in Cape Girardeau to get across the river.

A shuttle bus system is operating, but it's still a long commute, McCullah said.

State highway officials are considering establishing a temporary ferry service that would shorten the trip. A shuttle ferry is currently operating at Hannibal, where flooding closed the Quincy, Ill., bridge that spans the Mississippi.

But such an operation would be more difficult in Perry County because the ferry would have to traverse flooded land behind the broken levee.

McCullah said he expects the highway department will decide by early next week whether to hire a ferry service while Highway 51 remains flooded. "We are trying to do anything we can to minimize that two-hour trip that all those workers have to make every day," he said.

Meanwhile, Missouri highway crews are working to make repairs to the Chester bridge. The highway crews have to travel through Illinois to reach the bridge, McCullah said.

The deck repair work is routine and had been scheduled before floodwaters forced the closing of the bridge earlier this summer.

He said the underwater footings of the Chester bridge would be inspected by divers before the span is reopened to traffic.

As to Horse Island bridge on the Missouri approach to the Chester span, McCullah said: "We think it has some damage, but not critical. Right now it is banged up and clogged up with drift (debris)."

This summer's flooding has caused some "substantial damage" to state roads in Southeast Missouri, although the total extent is not yet known, he said.

But unlike the damage to roads in the Jefferson City area that were swamped by the flooding Missouri River, damage to state roads in this area has been far less because the flooding was from water backing up.

As a result, the roads in this region have not had to contend with swift-moving water, he explained.

But flooding has damaged the gravel shoulders of roads such as Highway 74, he said. Water is still over the road in some places near Dutchtown and the sandbag levee on the roadway has not yet been removed.

Near Interstate 55, where the Diversion Channel floodwater has receded, highway crews are already at work repairing the shoulders of Highway 74. For the repairs, highway crews are making use of gravel and crushed stone from no-longer-needed sandbags, McCullah said.