Wider and deeper

Anxiety takes over in the Barberis house in Dutchtown every time a hard rain hits.

Even if it's dry in Dutchtown, a hard rain a few miles north of their house along Hubble Creek can make for a dangerous situation.

"This comes through like the Mississippi River when it floods," Pat Barberis said as she sat in her living room, pointing toward the back of the home where Hubble Creek cuts through Dutchtown on its way to the Diversion Channel.

"It carries a lot of force," said her husband, David.

Even trees aren't safe. When the creek rises quickly, inevitably some will float past the Barberis home.

Their anxiety isn't ill-founded -- Hubble Creek is taking their yard from them, and the drop-off that leads to the creek bed is literally just a few feet from their mobile home.

If the home slides into Hubble, the Barberises won't be the first to fall victim to the creek. People who have lived in the Dutchtown area for years know the story of the Stephens family, who lost their home years before.

Once 5 feet deep, now 30

And the Barberises may not be the last. Along the length of Hubble Creek, the creek continues to get deeper, the banks farther apart. Two factors are continually working to make Hubble Creek larger and larger -- the existence of the Diversion Channel, built in the 1910s and 1920s, and continued development in the northern part of the Hubble Creek watershed.

Stan Murray has seen the dramatic effects of Hubble's expansion in his work with the Cape Girardeau County Soil and Water Conservation District. One man has told Murray a story passed down from his grandfather, who was able to stand in the creek channel and look into the cornfield adjoining the creek on either side. That would be impossible now. Where Hubble Creek enters the Diversion Channel, the creek was once only 5 to 7 feet deep from the bottom of the creek to the top of the banks. Now it's about 30 feet deep and getting deeper. The same effect is seen along the rest of the creek south of the Jackson area.

Frank Milde pointed to where his farmland along Hubble Creek has eroded away.

"It's pretty dramatic," Murray said. "In the time span of 70 years there's been significant changes."

The Barberises' acquaintance with the ever-shifting Hubble is rather short -- they've only lived along the creek banks for eight years, and their back yard has only started falling away in the past four or five.

Frank Milde, a fifth-generation farmer in the Dutchtown area, has worked along Hubble for several decades. Over the years the creek has swallowed up two to three acres of his property since he took over the land in 1965.

Milde stopped at a spot on a gravel road, County Road 234, and pointed to a "no trespassing" sign stuck in the ground near the creek's edge. The top of the sign is below road level, but in October, the ground the sign is stuck in was even with the road. County crews have piled rock along the road edge in the hopes that the erosion will stop, but it hasn't worked so far.

"There's spots like this all up that creek," Milde said as he surveyed the several feet of washed-out ground that lead to the creek channel. "The creek's getting deeper, and it's getting wider."

And he doesn't see the phenomenon stopping. A little down the road lies Milde's land. He drives along the creek edge in his farm truck, stopping at a spot where a railroad culvert marks the old creek bottom. The culvert is now several feet above the surface of the water flowing through Hubble. The edges of the drop-off to the creek floor show they've been sheared away, with tree roots sticking out into the air. Trees lean.

"Where we're sitting in this truck, one day will be in the creek," Milde said.

Hubble starts in the Fruitland area north of Jackson and winds its way south to the Diversion Channel. As it does so, natural forces are pushing Hubble to level its floor with that of the deeper Diversion Channel, Murray said. As that process occurs, the banks widen and their edges become weaker, and chunks of earth are claimed by the creek.

The drainage that the Diversion Channel provided opened up the area for agricultural use and for people to build communities. Over the years the lands in the creek's watershed were converted into first farmland, and then into communities. As that happened, the ground could no longer absorb storm water as it could when the area was woodland. The result has been increased runoff into Hubble Creek, creating more water force that cuts the channel deeper and eats away at the banks.

Local, federal and state governments are aware of the issue. Three "grade stabilization" structures -- rock dams that slow the force of the creek's waters -- have been constructed along the creek since 2001 by state, local and federal agencies. The most recent was constructed in 2005 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just south of County Road 228 below the confluence of Williams Creek and Hubble Creek. The construction was something of an emergency procedure, said Michelle Kniep, a project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers St. Louis District.

"It was a quick construction job to stop an erosion process that was going to take out the bridge if we didn't stop it," Kniep said.

One of the Corps of Engineers projects was installed on the creek bank opposite the Barberis home, and the couple thinks the structure has pushed the force of the water to their bank.

Jackson's rule

Jackson's city government learned of the problems along Hubble several years ago and implemented ordinances to control storm-water runoff in new development in the fast-growing city, said city administrator Jim Roach. The ordinance basically requires developers to install basins to control runoff, making sure the runoff after the development is the same as it was before the area was developed, he said.

But Jackson wasn't the sole source of the urbanization problem. The area around unincorporated Fruitland is also growing quickly, and Murray and officials with the local office of the Missouri Department of Conservation say that growth is contributing to the changes in Hubble. However, unlike Jackson, there is no regulation for runoff outside incorporated areas in Cape Girardeau County.

An ordinance similar to Jackson's has been in consideration for several months but has not yet been passed.

But at this point a county ordinance would be too late to help the Barberises and too late to stop the process already in effect on Hubble Creek. Murray said the measures taken so far to fix Hubble have alleviated the problem somewhat but that the deepening and widening of the creek "will probably continue for some time."

The Barberises have tried to seek help from the Little River Drainage District and from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to no avail. Larry Dowdy, executive vice president of the district, said in his opinion Hubble itself is not the district's responsibility because it's a naturally occurring feature of the landscape, not a structure the district has built.

Alan Dooley, public information officer with the corps' St. Louis District, said the corps has no authority to step in and help a single private property owner.

"We all think in this country we're taxpayers and when something happens government should come to our assistance, but we don't have the wherewithal to do that," Dooley said. "I feel for people when their homes are in jeopardy, but I just hope they have good insurance."

'Fall through the cracks'

The Barberises say their insurance agent has worked with them as best he can, but that he can't do anything to help until the home, or part of it, slides off into the creek. They've also contacted U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson to see if she can help. Working through Emerson is the couple's last resort. If they can't get relief through that channel, the Barberises say they don't know what they can do.

"We have been trying all these years to get something done," Pat Barberis said. "This all could have been avoided. But I was more or less informed that we fall through the cracks."

For now the couple has moved objects with sentimental value to the side of the home farthest from the creek. The hope is if part of the home slides away, those possessions won't go with it.

"Everything else is just material possessions," David Barberis said.

For now they'll just watch their land fall away into the creek, hoping another heavy rain won't be the final force that takes the home down into Hubble. Acts as simple as mowing the yard have even caused land to slide into the creek basin, the Barberises say.

"It's like a time bomb," David Barberis said.

msanders@semissourian.com

David Barberis stood in his back yard, which has been eroded to within several feet of the base of the house by Hubble Creek. (Diane L. Wilson)

335-6611, extension 182