Federal, state, local officials meet to discuss flood response in Southeast Missouri

NEW MADRID, Mo. -- Concerns about flooding from the Mississippi River have receded somewhat but local, state and federal officials will meet this week to discuss preparedness and response.

The meeting is scheduled at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the Community Center in New Madrid by U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson. Representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the State Emergency Management Agency, the Red Cross, area county commissions and emergency management directors are slated to attend.

The meeting was originally scheduled because Emerson "was worried we were going to have a severe flood event because of all the melting snow," said Jeffrey Connor, Emerson's chief of staff at her Washington, D.C., office, "but it appears we are going to dodge the bullet."

Flooding concerns were heightened by the Corps' planned two-day release of water from the Dakotas into the Missouri River. The Corps' spring rise policy is based on ecological concerns about providing enough water in the river for the pallid sturgeon to spawn.

Fears about the release of reservoir water in the upper Missouri River causing the Mississippi to flood downstream are not new.

"We always get concerned in the spring," Connor said. "There have been years in the past when we've asked [the Corps] to cancel the spring rise and they haven't done it. There's been years in which they've actually had two pulses."

On March 19, the Corps announced it had canceled the spring rise this year.

Connor said it is nice that the Corps responded to the concerns of Southeast Missouri residents and others who could have been affected by flooding from the Mississippi River.

"It was the right decision when there is that much snow and that much uncertainty over river levels," Connor said.

Despite the relief provided by the Corps' decision, Connor said the meeting in New Madrid will still be held as scheduled.

"The opportunity to sit down with Red Cross, the Corps, SEMA and talk about the kind of response we would have in the event of a flood is always worth doing," he said. "It's still important to bring together stakeholders to talk about what can be done to keep people in communities as safe as possible."

Jamie Koehler, emergency services director for the Southeast Missouri Chapter of the American Red Cross, said this is the first opportunity her branch has had to participate in this type of meeting with Emerson's office.

"One of our primary missions is providing mass care at the time of a disaster or emergency that includes opening up shelters and feeding people," Koehler said. "Our interest every spring is, 'Are people prepared if there is to be flooding and is the community prepared if there is to be flooding?' We just want to be a partner at the table with the communities and the agencies to make sure that we are ready."