SOME LEVEES ARE NOT DUE REPAIR FUNDS

While the high water has passed to the south, the repair of levees damaged in flooding along the upper Mississippi River has just begun.

The flood broke through or topped more than two-thirds of the 1,576 levees along the Missouri and upper Mississippi River basins, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in levee damage.

During a preliminary study, the U.S. Corps of Engineers found that only 203 of these levees are eligible for help from the corps.

"A total of 1,082 levees were damaged," said Jake Scanlon of the St. Louis District corps office. "That leaves 879 damaged levees that are not eligible for aid from the corps."

Sixty-eight of the levees eligible for corps aid are in the St. Louis District, said Scanlon. "That includes the levee that breached near Perryville," he added.

Also included on the federal list are levees in Harrisonville, Fort Chartres, Prairie du Rocher and Kaskaskia Island in Illinois.

Of the 68 levees eligible for 100 percent federal repair funds, 21 were breached and the remainder suffered damages.

Meanwhile, many levees constructed by private levee districts or farmers to protect land along the rivers are eligible for some repair aid from two Agriculture Department programs: the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Soil Conservation Services (SCS).

Still others, notes Scanlon, are not eligible for any repair money.

One of these is the Fayville Levee in Alexander County in Southern Illinois, which flooded thousands of acres of farm land when it broke in June.

The Chesterfield levee in St. Louis is eligible for full repair aid, noted Scanlon, "but it falls under the Kansas City district."

Meanwhile, the Corps of Engineers is conducting studies of levees throughout the upper Mississippi River.

"Our project management office has started looking into repairs," said Scanlon. "Our design people are looking into the big breeches, where we will be doing some initial repairs at the 10-year-flood levels this fall."

Scanlon said some levels of repairs were necessary at a number of sites to offer protection for next spring.

"We usually see some flooding every spring," he said. "We're also assessing other damage. We hope to have all reports in and start getting some major contracts by spring."

At this time, the corps can't start to estimate the total costs of repairing the federal levees.

Levee levels along the upper Mississippi River are broken down into four types.

Scanlon explains:

Federal levees are those built and maintained by the corps. They are eligible for repairs funded 100 percent by the federal government.

Another type is non-federal levees built or modified to corps specifications, but built and maintained by local levee districts. These levees are inspected twice a year by the corps. The federal government will pick up 80 percent of the cost for rebuilding these levees.

Another levee level is the non-federal levees that do not meet corps specifications and are not eligible for any federal reconstruction aid. The Fayville levee falls into this category.

The final classification is for agricultural or private levees that were built with no standards or consistency, and are not eligible for any federal aid.

Levees in the lower Mississippi River, from Cairo, Ill., to the Gulf of Mexico, are all funded by the federal government.

"But, all the levees in the lower Mississippi are built by the corps," points out Scanlon.

Following the devastating lower Mississippi flood of 1927, when thousands of farms and homes were lost, Congress passed legislation that directed the corps to "tame the river."

"The corps did what it was told," said Scanlon.

All of the levees in the lower Mississippi have been built under the direction of the corps. Since the 1927 flood, more than $8 billion has been spent building 1,600 miles of federal levees from Cairo to the Gulf. The lower Mississippi project including the extensive levee network prevented $13.5 billion in damages in the 1973 flood, the Army Corps says.

Meanwhile, farmers and others have been building most of the levees on the upper river.

Only recently, the White House issued a directive giving levee districts and the corps an alternative to rebuilding some levees damaged by the flood.

According to a copyright story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the plan outlined in the directive would allow a farmer to sell to the government if federal restoration costs exceeded the farm's fair market value. The farmland would then revert to wetlands that could help alleviate future flood damages.

"It's my understanding that this is only a suggested alternative," said Scanlon. "We're (corps) not pushing for this."

U.S. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond is questioning the new directive.

"People in the Midwest want to get back to their homes and try to put this flood behind them," said Bond during a visit to the Missouri State Fair last week. "Until this 500-year flood, the levees along the rivers protected families, homes and communities from devastation for years.

"An administration policy that abandons a secure system of levees for environmental experimentation along the rivers would jeopardize these families and communities," said Bond, who believes that the federal government should allow Midwesterners to repair the levee system on which they have relied for protection as they built their levees.

Bond said he would study the directive. He also cautioned that "any delays in rebuilding the levee system, while the federal government debates a new flood control system, could leave Midwesterners unprotected after spring rains.

A bill recently introduced in Congress would require the Army Corps to study and recommend flood-control improvements on the upper Mississippi, and examine differences in federal cost-sharing for levees and other projects on both stretches of the river.

"A decision made in this Capitol building 66 years ago has given peace of mind to people who live on the lower Mississippi River," said Rep. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recently. "We want the same peace of mind on the upper Mississippi."

Durbin is the lead sponsor of the latest bill seeking the flood study on the upper Mississippi.