Swollen Mississippi defeats another levee By CHERYL WITTENAUER WINFIELD, Mo. - The swollen Mississippi River burst another levee Tuesday, submerging farmland and threatening a residential area whose occupants had already moved out in anticipation of a flood. The levee failure near St. Charles comes as teams furiously fill sandbags to reinforce other waterlogged embankments guarding towns still waiting for the arrival of the huge river's flood crest. Forecasters expect the last stretch of the bloated river to crest later this week. "The spirits are tired, but they are still there and still solid," said Jo Anne Smiley, mayor of Clarksville, where makeshift sandbag levees are keeping the city's small downtown dry. "This is a community that will rise above this." Smiley toured her town Monday with Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' chief of engineers. He said he was most concerned about agricultural levees up and down the river. "I think what they have is holding well," Van Antwerp said. "Now, it's a matter of getting the water off of it." But in the saturated Elm Point levee at St. Charles, Mo., about 30 miles north of St. Louis, two gaps allowed water to flood hundreds of acres of agricultural land. A mobile home park where about 700 people live near the Elm Point Levee had already been evacuated. The constant pressure of the river remains the primary concern in Lincoln County, where officials asked for volunteers Monday to help fill 50,000 sandbags to fortify the 2 1/2-mile-long Pin Oak levee, an earthen berm that was so waterlogged that it was like "walking on a waterbed," said county emergency management spokesman Andy Binder. Federal officials said they couldn't be sure it would survive through the river's crest at Winfield later in the week. "They have a serious condition on their hands," said Travis Tutka, the Army Corps' chief of dam safety. "This will be quite a test of that levee." If it breaches, the river will swamp 100 homes in east Winfield, as well as 3,000 acres of farm fields, several businesses and a city ballpark. A muskrat that burrowed a hole in the soft ground released a geyser of water, and officials said it took nearly six hours Monday to choke off the leak. "There is no guarantee of performance, but we're fighting the good fight," Tutka said. Only a handful of residents remained in east Winfield on Monday, after emergency workers went door to door urging them to evacuate. Among the holdouts was Sherman Jones, 56, who was all alone in his house except for his dogs, Mugsy and Junior.
TxDOT Recommends Narrowing Study Area for Texas Portion of I-69 The Texas Department of Transportation announced it will recommend that I-69/TTC be developed using existing highway facilities wherever possible. After an extensive public involvement effort, TxDOT received a record 28,000 comments. An initial review of these comments has been completed. As a result, the new location corridors proposed and presented during the public hearings earlier this year are no longer under consideration...
TxDOT Recommends Narrowing Study Area for Texas Portion of I-69 The Texas Department of Transportation announced it will recommend that I-69/TTC be developed using existing highway facilities wherever possible. After an extensive public involvement effort, TxDOT received a record 28,000 comments. An initial review of these comments has been completed. As a result, the new location corridors proposed and presented during the public hearings earlier this year are no longer under consideration...