WORK UNDER WAY ON WALKER BRANCH; FLOOD CONTROL PROGRESSES

The final phase of channel improvements for Cape Girardeau's Cape LaCroix Creek-Walker Branch flood-control project is under way.

Crews are relocating electrical and sewer lines from the Walker Branch area, said city planner Kent Bratton.

Channel improvements on the latest phase of the project will focus on Walker Branch from just north of Kingsway Drive to the intersection of Cape Rock Drive and Perryville Road, a distance of just more than a mile.

The work will take place just east of Karau Lane, Landgraf Drive and Howell Street and just west of Clark Avenue.

Improvements will include straightening and widening the natural channel of Walker Branch up to Marietta Street.

An earthen channel measuring 75 feet wide by 8-to-12 feet deep will be dug.

The width of the natural channel "varies down through there," Bratton said. "It's not very wide. It meanders all the way down through there."

The natural channel has been straightened somewhat, he said, "as the subdivisions have edged up against it."

The earthen channel will be planted with grass so it can be mowed and maintained.

Upstream from Marietta Street, the earthen channel will narrow to a 20-foot wide, 8-foot deep channel.

In the center of the earthen channel, an 8-foot wide, 1-foot deep concrete pilot channel will be constructed to contain the normal flow of the creek.

Channel work should be completed this fall.

The city is also working to acquire property for construction of a dry detention basin on a Cape LaCroix tributary north of the city limits.

The final phase of the project calls for extending the city's hiking and biking trail through the project area.

Channel improvements on Cape LaCroix Creek from Brink Street to Arena Park and on Walker Branch along Kingshighway have already been completed.

"The project was designed to reduce flooding in the main commercial area along Kingshighway," Bratton said.

In 1986, a band of storms and tornadoes ripped through the region. Two people were killed in Cape Girardeau in flash flooding, and the flooding caused $56 million in damages mostly on the city's west side.

More than 800 homes in Scott and Cape Girardeau counties were damaged in the storm.

The city and Army Corps of Engineers are funding the flood-control project. The Corps is picking up 75 percent of the total cost of more than $40 million.

The most recent phase of construction will cost approximately $3.8 million. The city's share of the current phase is approximately $1.8 million.

Voters approved a sales tax in 1988 to help pay the cost of the project.