PLANS BEING MADE FOR VISIT BY FEMA CHIEF JAMES WITT

The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is scheduled to visit Cape Girardeau early next month to officially welcome the city into FEMA's Project Impact program.

James Lee Witt will visit the city Feb. 3 and participate in a signing ceremony at the Show Me Center. Numerous state and federal officials and local dignitaries are expected to attend, as well as representatives from Project Impact partners in the business community, civic groups and state and local agencies.

The ceremony likely will be open to the public. Further details will be released prior to Witt's visit. Plans for the visit have not been finalized.

In June, FEMA named Cape Girardeau the Project Impact city for Missouri. The program is intended to help communities become more disaster resistant.

As part of the program, the city will benefit from a $500,000 grant that will go for a number of disaster mitigation projects over the next two years.

Design and planning on several of the projects are under way. Further work on at least two more should begin within the next six months.

While Witt is in town, he is scheduled to tour various other mitigation projects currently taking place. Project sites include the Cape LaCroix Creek-Walker Branch flood-control project and the Mississippi River flood-buyout areas.

Witt is also tentatively scheduled to be the featured speaker at the Chamber of Commerce's monthly First Friday Coffee, which was moved to Feb. 3, a Wednesday, to accommodate the FEMA director.

That event will also be at the Show Me Center and will begin at 7:30 a.m.