MISSISSIPPI FLOODWALL KEEPS CAPE DRY; THE FLOODING IN DAVENPORT, IOWA, IS REMINISCENT OF YEARS PAST HERE

Until the floodwall was dedicated in 1964, Cape Girardeau's downtown experienced the trials of sandbagging, worrying and destruction Davenport, Iowa, is going through.

The threatened Iowa city so far has rejected permanent flood control in order to preserve its Mississippi River view. Summer jazz festivals on the river draw hundreds of thousands of people annually, and tourists spend $100 million a year in the Quad Cities of Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island and Moline, Ill.

Cape Girardeau's floodwall blocks the river view except through its two gates, which probably won't be closed for this round of high water. The Mississippi is expected to crest here at 33.5 feet on May 4, a foot and a half over flood stage. Andy Juden Jr., president of the Main Street Levee District, said the Themis Street gate is closed at 35 feet and the Broadway gate at 39 feet.

Cape Girardeau talked about flood protection for 40 years before its 4,000-foot-long floodwall was built. During that time, various ideas were advanced. Some people opposed building a floodwall at all.

Opposing plans

A Civic Plan would have moved the city's business district to higher ground, possibly between Broadway and Good Hope. A riverfront park would have been built downtown.

Another idea called the Erlbacher Plan involved building a floodwall from Cape Rock to the Frisco Railroad wall and filling behind the wall to the second-story level on Water Street.

But after downtown Cape Girardeau flooded six or seven times between 1941 and 1951, downtown landowners took the problem in hand. Ninety percent of the property downtown then was owned by five families the Judens, Hechts, Lamkins, Hutsons and Bahns. They petitioned Congress for a study for a floodwall. The wall originally was going to be made of dirt, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers agreed to provide a concrete version of the levee.

The project was built in 12 sections that included both earthen levees and concrete walls. Reaches 2 and 3 of the wall were built. Reach 1 to the north and Reach 4 to the south were never built because they did not satisfy the Corps' cost-benefit ratio.

No cost to city

The citizens of Cape Girardeau were not asked to vote on the floodwall, and Cape Girardeau has never paid a cent for the protection. The downtown levee district raised the initial $500,000, and the wall and its pumping stations are maintained and operated through a tax on 110 downtown properties that raises $25,000 annually.

The floodwall made it possible for Cape Girardeau to maintain a healthy business district during the years before the Town Plaza shopping center began to shift some of the focus westward in the 1960s, says downtown furniture store owner Charles Hutson.

"When they built the wall the city started growing and started attracting a lot of industry," he says. "If we had had a downtown Cape Girardeau that had been abandoned or looked like other parts of the city, that wouldn't have happened. It held the downtown as a viable business district."

Before the floodwall was built, the Hutson family furniture store was located at the northeast corner of Independence and Main streets. Big floods sometimes pushed river water west from Water Street to Main Street and even to Spanish Street. In those cases, businesses closed and usually had to move their merchandise to the second floors.

Boardwalk shopping

Hutson recalls that in smaller floods the merchants built boardwalks across Main Street so shoppers could still get around. His store now is located across the street and farther south at 43 S. Main St.

Juden says the record-breaking Flood of 1993 would have left two feet of water in Hecht's Store at 107 N. Main St. if not for the floodwall. "Almost everything downtown would have been inundated. There would have been 12 feet of water in Hutson's."

Federal Emergency Management Agency director Joe Albaugh has criticized Davenport's refusal to build a floodwall, saying taxpayers shouldn't have to bail the city out every time the river floods. Davenport, a city of 98,300, is the largest urban area on the upper Mississippi without a floodwall.

Mayor Phil Yerington defends the decision. "We pay our share of the load," he says. "I feel sometimes the people in this area have been singled out and are punished just because we happen to live along the river."

The city's public works director, Dee Bruemmer, points out that the city has instituted tighter building regulations and has bought up many properties in the floodplain. "There is more than one way to do flood control," says Bruemmer.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.