State agency backs effort to repair flood zone

CHARLESTON, Mo. -- Missouri's top emergency management official will back Mississippi County's attempts to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to fix county roads it destroyed.

Ron Walker, director of the State Emergency Management Agency, "said SEMA is willing to help us and are in agreement with us," Carlin Bennett, presiding county commissioner, said during the County Commission's regular meeting Thursday.

Since May 2011, when the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway was activated by the corps, county officials have been asking corps officials to repair roads in the northeast part of the county near Birds Point, damaged first by floodwater and then by trucks and heavy equipment working to restore the levee.

"They had triple-axle dump trucks in there for months," Bennett said.

Bennett said officials have assured since before the floodway was activated that "everything would be put back to pre-event conditions."