COMMERCE SEEKS BUYOUT; SCOTT COUNTY RIVER TOWN APPLIES FOR $1.7 MILLION

COMMERCE -- The small Mississippi River town of Commerce could be getting smaller.

The town board has applied for $1.7 million in federal and state money to buy 72 houses and vacant lots in the flood-prone area. The houses would be torn down and the lots cleared.

Town officials hope for an answer by late September or early October.

State Emergency Management Agency representatives visited the 205-year-old Scott County town this week and helped town officials fill out the application.

Commerce won't be the only applicant. Cape Girardeau wants $1.64 million to buy and raze up to 65 homes in four flood-prone areas.

Some 20 to 30 Missouri communities are expected to apply for buyout money, said Buck Katt, SEMA's assistant director. But there won't be enough money to help every community, he said Thursday from his Jefferson City office.

The deadline for applying to the state is Aug. 25.

The 72 tracts in the proposed Commerce buyout include 45 to 50 homes. Many of the houses have been vacant since the spring flood, said Roy Jones, who chairs the town board.

The properties include everything in the flood plain. Only 17 homes in Commerce are above the flood plain and automatically excluded from any buyout.

With a buyout, the town's population could shrink from 173 to 73, Jones said.

The buyout program is voluntary. But Jones estimated that at least 80 percent of affected property owners want to sell.

Jones includes himself in that number. Floodwaters have regularly threatened his home.

He said he and others probably won't be rebuilding anywhere else in Commerce.

"I don't know of any place in town that you could build. There is not much property available that people want to sell."

Instead, Jones faces the prospect of having to leave the town he now leads.

Unless the federal government agrees to build a levee, Jones sees a buyout as the only option. "The town can't go through another flood," he said. "These houses are already ruined.

"People are actually getting sick from all the mold and mildew. There is a huge mosquito problem. People have left and the lots have grown up with weeds," he said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has allocated about $3 million for buyouts in Missouri.

That money would pay 75 percent of the buyout costs. Under the current plan, the state would pay the remaining 25 percent.

As part of the buyout, cities must maintain the properties as open space once the houses are torn down.

Jones doesn't expect that to be a burden for Commerce, even though it operates on a shoestring budget. The town receives only $1,000 to $1,200 a year from real estate and personal property taxes.

Jones said farmers want to use the land.