Road weary: Highways still underwater; officials expect reopenings soon

Although the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau has dropped more than 2 feet over the past week, seepage on the Illinois side of the river continues to cause significant flooding in Alexander County.

Meanwhile, the Missouri Department of Transporation says the Mississippi River Bridge at Chester, Illinois, could reopen as early as this weekend.

Periods of heavy rain Wednesday added to flooding in and around East Cape Girardeau and McClure. Floodwaters have forced closure of Illinois Route 3 between Route 146 and Gale and have reduced the highway to one partly water-covered lane south of McClure.

“We have nine very high-capacity pumps running at gale that are pumping close to around 900,000 gallons of water per minute, and that’s just to keep up with the backwater as it accumulates from the relief wells and rainwater,” Keith Miley with the Illinois Department of Transportation said Wednesday afternoon. Miley is the bureau chief of operations with IDOT’s District 9 based in Carbondale, Illinois.

Miley said there are approximately 100 “relief wells” positioned near McClure and East Cape Girardeau. “They relieve pressure off the Mississippi River levee, so when the river reaches a certain elevation the groundwater comes to the surface and that’s where a lot of water comes from that’s trapped there,” he said.

“Each one of those wells is probably producing 750 gallons of water a minute,” he said. Multiplied by 100 wells, that’s roughly 750,000 gallons, which means the pumps at Gale are barely keeping up.

“As the river recedes, then the relief wells will produce less water and that’s when we’re going to start making a lot better headway with our pumping operation,” Miley explained, adding that the pumps have been running 24 hours a day, every day, for the past two weeks.

Parts of the closed section of Route 3 between Route 146 and Gale are covered were covered by 3 to 4 inches of water as of Wednesday afternoon. In addition, floodwater had encroached two of the four lanes of Route 146 near East Cape Girardeau. “Fortunately we have four lanes there so while we have some water on the driving lanes, we can use the passing lanes to move traffic,” Miley said, noting that the water encroachment on Route 146 appeared to have stabilized between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. “I had engineering staff on site and the indication was that we hadn’t lost any headway overnight,” he said Wednesday.

Route 3 south of McClure has been reduced to one lane of traffic since early last week as floodwaters have covered most of the highway’s northbound lane.

“We’re doing the best we can to keep it open to traffic,” Miley said and explained that timing of the traffic control signals on either end of the one-lane section was adjusted earlier this week, increasing the “green” time for southbound traffic in the morning and doing the same for northbound traffic in the afternoon to improve traffic flow for people traveling in and out of Cape Girardeau for work. “That’s been a good adjustment for us,” he said.

In his 36 years in his current position, Miley said he could only remember one other flooding situation with a greater impact on Southern Illinois highways. “In 2011 we had major river flooding and unfortunately at that time the Ohio River, the Mississippi river, the Saline River and the Big Muddy were all flooding at the same time. At one point we had 25 state routes closed due to flooding,” he said.

“Our primary goal,” he continued, “is to maintain traffic on Route 3 so we can have access to and from Cape Girardeau.”

Asked when Route 3 will be fully open, Miley said “I’m hopeful that within a couple of weeks we’ll be back to open status. I wouldn’t want to suggest it could happen any quicker than that.”

In addition to closing and restricting traffic on parts of Route 3, flooding has also closed the western entrance to Grapevine Trail near McClure, according to the Alexander County Highway Department.

Chester bridge

As for the Mississippi River bridge at Chester, MoDOT has scheduled a “post flood inspection” and the bridge could reopen as early as this weekend.

The bridge connects Route 51 in Perry County and has been closed since June 2 when the river gage at Chester topped 44 feet. The closure has meant detours and additional travel time for motorists traveling between the states. The Chester Bridge is the only traffic span between Cape Girardeau and the Jefferson Barracks Bridge in south St. Louis County.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the river at Chester was 42.9 feet. “We just can’t open the bridge until we can verify that it is safe to put traffic on it,” MoDOT area engineer Brian Okenfuss said Wednesday afternoon.

“Our inspector is going to be on site on Saturday, and we’re hopeful he’s going to be able to see what he needs to see,” Okenfuss said. “I don’t want to commit to opening on Saturday, but if river levels there fall as quickly as expected and we can see what we need to see and everything is OK then we’ll go ahead and open it.”

Any significant rainfall north of Chester in the next few days could alter the timeline. “It’s a fluid situation,” Okenfuss said.

The river at Chester crested early last week at 46.09 feet, the second-highest crest ever recorded there. The record crest at Chester was 49.74 feet on Aug. 7, 1993. Last week’s crest was just over an inch higher than the previous second-highest crest there of 45.99 feet on Jan. 2, 2016.

The Mississippi River gage at Cape Girardeau was measured at 44.31 feet at midafternoon Wednesday, and the National Weather Service predicted it would fall to 43.7 feet by early Thursday afternoon. It crested at 46.23 feet early last week, about two and a half feet below the Cape Girardeau’s record crest of 48.86 feet recorded on Jan. 2, 2016. By early July, forecasters predict the river could be low enough to allow the Themis and Broadway floodgates in downtown Cape Girardeau to open for the first time in more than three months.

177 and 74

Receding floodwaters should allow the reopening of routes 177 and 74 by early next week, Okenfuss said. MoDOT added several inches of gravel earlier this month to a short stretch of Route 177 to keep one lane of the road open. “We anticipate on Monday we’ll remove the aggregate from that location and then sometime either on Monday or more likely on Tuesday we’re hopeful of completely reopening it,” he said. “However we will have to inspect the road surface and repair any potholes or other damage which could delay things.”

By early next week Okenfuss said he expects floodwaters will have receded enough to reopen all of Route 74 between Interstate 55 and Dutchtown.

Updated information about road closures in the area can be found online at MoDOT.org and clicking on the “traveler information” link on MoDOT’s homepage.