Aging levee poses threat to East St. Louis

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. -- When record flooding ravaged much of the Midwest in 1993, the earthen wall protecting one of the nation's poorest cities stood fast against the Mississippi River.

Fifteen years later, as the river rises in a new round of historic flooding in the nation's heartland, there are fresh worries that the levee safeguarding the city's 30,000 residents is showing its age.

Along one stretch in the shadow of the towering Gateway Arch on the other side of the river, water appears to be outmaneuvering the levee, weaseling underneath the earthen wall and coming out the other side. In another spot, there's a small "sand boil" where river water is bubbling up out of the ground like a volcano.

So far, however, as the river crested here Friday well below its historic height of 1993, the leaking has produced only a small pool of water -- seepage the city and the Army Corps of Engineers considers manageable.

Monitors of the levee believe the wall will withstand the disastrous flooding that has sacked communities elsewhere.

However, it could be a case of disaster deferred; federal officials have declared that East St. Louis' levee system doesn't meet current standards for flood protection.

The questionable levee system protecting the city's population of largely poor, black and disenfranchised residents has produced comparisons to New Orleans. There, the levee system's failure in Hurricane Katrina drew attention to the city's racial divisions and government's perceived indifference to blacks, many of whom lived along the flawed levees.

"New Orleans had a worse set of circumstances because they're below sea level," said Tim Kusky, head of St. Louis University's Center of Environmental Sciences. "East St. Louis has a similar problem in that the levee system is not up to par."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency decided last year to rescind its accreditation of the area's levees as able to withstand a 100-year flood.

The ruling effectively makes the area an unprotected floodplain, having a potentially huge effect on housing costs, insurance rates and economic development. Some federal lawmakers from Illinois have been seeking a delay in requirements that Illinoisans in St. Louis' suburbs buy expensive flood insurance -- based on new FEMA maps -- until those on the Missouri side are done.

"The basic unfairness we're trying to fight against here in the Metro East is that FEMA ... decided to remap Illinois first. Once [the map] takes effect, insurance premiums go up only on the Illinois side," said Christina Mulka, spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who added the proposed delay as an amendment to separate flood insurance and spending bills.

The House approved the spending bill last week without the Durbin amendment, but it still is part of the flood insurance bill, Mulka said.

The delay also is meant to buy time for an estimated $180 million in levee repairs officials say are needed to the five-levee system safeguarding St. Louis suburbs in three Illinois counties along the Mississippi. That region has some 150,000 residents and 4,000 businesses, including a refinery and steel mills that could contaminate the river if they were swamped.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich last month signed into law a measure that lets those counties each create a flood-protection district that could increase the local sales tax by a quarter of a cent to help pay for levee improvements.

East St. Louis Mayor Alvin Parks Jr. would love to see those repairs on the levee in this once-thriving city where a casino now is the biggest employer. Formerly home to glass makers and other industries, East St. Louis saw a decline of smokestack factories and the exodus of whites in the 1960s that made it one of the nation's poorest cities.

But Parks trusts that the current levees will hold as the Mississippi River rises.

"We feel, based on what we heard from the Army Corps, that we're not in imminent danger," he said.

Upriver, levee breaks had allowed the river to drop in recent days at Missouri towns like Canton and Hannibal. Officials knew it was going to rise again to expected crests this weekend, but they were surprised by how much it rose Saturday. The National Weather Service said the amount of water draining from Iowa was apparently more than expected.

At Canton, the river was back up to 26.3 feet Saturday, after dipping to 22.6 feet two days earlier. Emergency management spokeswoman Monica Heaton said officials remained confident the levee will hold. At Hannibal, the river was at 28.5 feet Saturday and now is expected to go higher than the previous crest prediction of 28.7 feet.

Col. Lewis Setliff III, chief of the Army Corps' St. Louis district, said the river's crest at 37 feet Friday at East St. Louis was roughly 17 feet below the top of the levee. A crest of 46 feet would make it a 100-year flood -- that is, a flood so big that it has only a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year -- but this time it was merely a 10-year flood, Setliff said.

In 1993, the river reached a record 49.6 feet here.

Right now, Setliff said, "we're not worried at all."

A top environmentalist in the region doesn't share that view. Kathy Andria, a member of the Sierra Club and the American Bottom Conservancy groups, said her recent inspections of levees on the Illinois shore show "a number of problems."

"I think all of these things are disaster delayed," she said. "I think there's a real serious problem with our levees, and I think our elected officials are doing no one a favor in trying to keep the new FEMA maps from going into effect. People need flood insurance because the levees put them at risk."

"I'm fearful," she said. "And I think they really need to take this whole thing seriously."

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Associated Press writer Tammy Webber in Chicago contributed to this story.