Cape receives federal, state funding to continue flood buyout

The small, frame house at 411 Second St. stands vacant and alone, surrounded by empty lots from earlier flood buyouts in Cape Girardeau's Red Star neighborhood north of the city's floodwall and a few blocks from the Mississippi River.

But the house, with a back yard close to Sloan Creek, could be razed by this summer thanks to nearly $27,000 in federal and state flood buyout money awarded to the city of Cape Girardeau. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is providing most of the money, over $20,000. The State Emergency Management Agency is kicking in the rest.

If the plan is approved by the property owner, the house would be the first to be torn down with flood buyout money in at least two years, city officials said.

Severe flooding from the Mississippi River in 1993 and 1995 sparked the flood buyout program, leaving the city with grass lots on the city's north and south sides where flood-prone houses and businesses once stood.

Floodwaters threatened 151 homes in 1993. Thanks to the flood buyout, flooding last spring affected only six houses in the Red Star neighborhood, including the house on Second Street and two houses on South Sprigg Street, city officials said.

Buyout money became available again after last spring's Mississippi River flooding, said Martha Brown, who works in Cape Girardeau's planning services department. She wrote the latest funding request.

The house on Second Street is the first to flood when the river rises, she said.

Brown said she contacted the owners of the remaining flood-prone houses last summer. Mike Bragg, the owner of the house on Second Street, expressed interest in a possible buyout, she said.

The buyout program is voluntary on the part of property owners, so there will continue to be a few houses in the city's floodplain as long as the owners want to keep their properties, city officials said.

Brown said the proposed buyout isn't certain. The property first must be appraised. Bragg can reject the buyout if he doesn't like the price offered, she said.

Bragg couldn't be reached for comment on Thursday.

Brown said the house has been vacant since flooding last spring. "It hasn't been fixed up," she said.

The city's efforts to remove flood-damaged structures began in 1994.

Thirty-three families voluntarily relocated to higher ground. The city demolished the flood-damaged structures with a $88,000 Missouri Department of Economic Development grant. That wasn't part of the buyout program as the city didn't buy the properties.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123