MOUND CITY SHORES LEVEE LEAK; OHIO CREST EXPECTED AT CAIRO TODAY

MOUND CITY, Ill. -- A field team from the Army Corps of Engineers worked Wednesday on a leaky levee separating Mound City from the rampaging Ohio River.

A culvert beneath the Enterprise Street levee has been dumping a steady stream of river water into a catch basin near an ADM grain tower since Tuesday night. It isn't enough water to overwhelm a pump in the basin but was enough to send Corps divers into 20 feet of water at the mouth of the culvert to investigate.

Diver Billy Ulrich of Dyersburg, Tenn., spent about 10 minutes feeling his way around the culvert in the murky water before bringing bad news to the surface: The levee around the pipe was chipped and eroded, and water was seeping through.

Ulrich said the water was entering the pipe somewhere under the levee.

Mound City workers had plugged the city side of the culvert with a 3/4-inch steel plate, a 2,800-pound concrete block and the bucket of a track hoe. Sandbags were also piled on the manhole cover at the top of the levee. That stopped the leak inside the levee.

Mound City Mayor Sam Johnson said that should be enough to keep water from coming through.

"We had some people who saw the water coming out of the pipe and got worried," Johnson said. "We didn't want anyone running around saying the levee was failing."

Divers planned to stuff the eroded areas with material and stack sandbags around the pipe to stop the leak.

City workers hoped the problem was going to be simpler than it turned out to be. Cairo, Ill.-area Corps Commander Danny Max said he thought the problem might just have been flotsam caught in the flat-gate at the mouth of the culvert.

Almost 7 inches of rain in the area last weekend created a back flow from the basin into the river that opened the river-side gate. Max said he hoped it was something as simple as a bit of trash that was preventing the gate from closing again.

Max has been working since Tuesday preparing Cairo for today's 55-foot crest of the Ohio. Corps electrician Clifton Qualls inspected Cairo's two main water pumps. Despite some small mechanical problems, he said the pumps are working well.

Cairo city workers planned to finish blocking levee gates by this morning. The river was at 53.7 feet on the gauge Wednesday, running about 4 feet under the lower half of the gate.

When the river crests it will be about 15 feet above flood stage in Cairo.

Water lines much of Illinois Route 3 from below Olive Branch to Cairo. The water isn't over the road but some service roads into Horseshoe Lake were closed because of flooding.