NIXON BLAMES CORPS

JEFFERSON CITY -- The Missouri River roared toward "bad, bad, super bad" weekend crests up to 16 feet above flood stage, while the state attorney general blasted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' river management policies.

"An extra foot of water is courtesy of the Corps" and its practice of releasing water from upriver reservoirs to protect fowl and fisheries, Attorney General Jay Nixon said Friday.

But Corps spokesman Paul Johnston said Nixon's claim was "not quite accurate," because the federal agency's increased flows amounted to an "almost immeasurable" part of the flood.

More than half of the floodwaters are from swollen Missouri rivers far downstream from the Corps' last reservoir, he added.

No matter the source, the Missouri's projected crests along a 200-mile stretch from Boonville east to St. Charles boosted anxieties in towns raising makeshift levees. They were encouraged by sunshine Friday and a weekend forecast for clear weather.

"We're still here," Hartsburg Mayor Mike Rodemeyer declared after his Boone County community built a levee of crushed rock and sandbags in a dozen-hour span ending at daybreak Friday. "We're still dry."

Sandbag-filling drew hundreds of volunteers along the Missouri. Pitching in is "part of living around the river," said Kevin Nahler, who filled bags at Hartsburg.

St. Charles County officials ordered residents in flood-prone areas to get out.

"Some aren't leaving, of course, but a lot of them left even before notification. They've been through it before," said Petra Haws, spokeswoman for St. Charles County's emergency management agency.

Two deaths have been attributed so far to the Missouri flooding. State officials have reported flood or storm damage in almost 50 counties, but no dollars amounts have been estimated.

There were 48 deaths in nine Midwest states in the record 1993 floods, to which the current deluge is often being compared.

The Corps of Engineers said the new flooding is breaking one 1993 mark: crests will be higher this weekend on the Missouri than at the same point in the first of three waves of floods two summers ago.

The river is expected to crest Saturday morning at the river communities of Waverly and Glasgow, and Saturday afternoon and evening in Boonville downriver to Jefferson City, Hermann and Washington.

Corps spokesman George Hanley's summary of the high-water marks: "Bad, bad, super bad."

At Boonville, the Missouri is projected to hit 33.3 feet on Saturday, 12.3 feet above flood stage. At Jefferson City, the Saturday crest is predicted to be 34 feet, 11 feet above flood stage.

Where the Missouri River meets the Gasconade River, the Missouri will be 16 feet above flood stage, at 38 feet, on Saturday. Hermann's crest will be 36 feet on Saturday, 15 feet above flood stage. In Washington, the crest Saturday night will reach 33 feet, some 13 feet above flood stage.

And the projected crest for Sunday morning at St. Charles, where the Missouri dumps into the Mississippi River, is 37 feet -- 12 feet above flood stage.

Nixon said the high water showed basic flaws in the Corps' management of the river. It's part of a larger ongoing dispute between Missouri and other states relying on warm-weather barge traffic and upstream states desiring controlled river levels to help marinas and wildlife.

"To save 155,000 acres of shoreline in Nebraska for a bird called the plover cannot be balanced against sandbagging and loss by thousands of Missourians," Nixon told the AP.

The attorney general said the Corps increased its releases from reservoirs from 12,000 cubic feet per second on May 1 to 19,000 cubic feet per second on May 10, a flow he said continues.

The difference is enough to boost to river level by a foot, Nixon said.

"A foot is a lot to people out on the sandbag lines and whose houses are that close to the river water," he said.

And a proposed Corps plan for river management would result in another one-foot increase in a similar flood situation, Nixon added.

But Johnston said from the Corps' Missouri River Division headquarters in Omaha, Neb., that "we are constraining our releases" to the minimum necessary to handle upstream runoff.

He also noted that the Missouri was rushing past Boonville on Friday at a rate of 366,000 cubic feet per second. Relative to that rush of water, Johnston said, the 7,000 cubic feet per second difference Nixon was faulting was "almost immeasurable."

And, Johnston said, more than half of the flow at Boonville was caused by water from two other swollen northern and western Missouri rivers. The Kansas River was contributing 93,000 cubic feet per second, and the Grand River gushed at 102,000 cubic feet per second.

"The water is coming into the river below where we have any control over it," he said.

In St. Louis, workers put in another section of floodwall on the city's north end as the Mississippi continued its slow rise fed by the Missouri.

The larger river was again climbing the steps at the riverfront Gateway Arch, but was still far below 1993's levels.

Gov. Mel Carnahan and state disaster officials planned a Saturday aerial tour of flooding and recent tornado damage in eastern Missouri.

"But at this point, the damage is nowhere near 1993 levels. We know that's no consolation to the people who are being flooded out. But as far as the scope, it's not comparable," said Marc Farinella, Carnahan's chief of staff.