Cape Girardeau levee among those Corps wants to improve

ST. LOUIS -- Flood levees that protect much of the St. Louis area fail to provide protection against a 100-year flood, even though Congress has authorized 500-year protection for those levees, the commander of the St. Louis district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday.

Col. Lewis Setliff III spoke at a news conference before a summit on flood protection. Government and business leaders participated in the event in St. Louis County to learn about flood risk management.

Setliff said Congress authorized levees or levee systems -- at St. Louis, Chesterfield, Festus/Crystal City and at Cape Girardeau in Southeast Missouri -- to provide protection against a 500-year flood.

But Setliff said they fall short of even 100-year protection. A 100-year flood event is not one likely to occur once a century, but instead one that has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year, officials said.

"I'm very confident, though, that they can provide protections," he said. "They just cannot provide the levels of protection authorized by Congress without human intervention."

Setliff said temporary measures would be taken to strengthen levees in advance of flooding.

Still, the Corps is seeking more permanent solutions.

Missouri and much of the Midwest were hit hard by massive floods in 1993 and again in 1995. The 1993 flood broke through a levee at Chesterfield and left the Chesterfield Valley under several feet of water. The levee at St. Louis held during both big floods, but water rose up the steps of the Gateway Arch at the edge of downtown St. Louis.

Many of the levee systems are aging, and officials have learned more about how to protect against flooding and what causes levees to fail in recent years, Setliff said.

"With every levee, there's a different story," he said.

Setliff said the four deficient levees in Missouri are among nine in his district that need upgrades. The other five are in Illinois. He estimated it would cost about $200 million to get all nine up to standards.

U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo., who participated in the summit, said coming up with that much money would take many years.

"To the extent we can identify priorities, that leaders of these communities up and down the river can link arms and know that there's strength in numbers, strength in setting priorities, that's going to help us achieve these goals," Carnahan said.

The St. Louis district of the corps covers about 300 miles of flood plain north of the Ohio River confluence.