FIRST TEST OF FLOOD PROJECT GIVES MIXED RESULTS

Last week's severe flooding in Cape Girardeau was our first real test to see if Cape Girardeau's massive flood-control project was worth the $40 million-plus taxpayers shelled out for it.

The answer? Yes and no.

Walker Branch, swollen nearly to its concrete-paved rim, did what it was supposed to do for some areas. Town Plaza stayed dry, and merchants there were singing the praises of the flood-control project. That's the same shopping center that was under 2 1/2 feet of floodwater in 1986. It was part of a total $56 million in damages to the area that year.

Folks along other parts of Walker Branch, including those along Landgraf Drive, smiled over flood-free lawns and basements. For them, the project handled the runoff from 5.76 inches of rainfall, most of which came over three hours the morning of July 19, the way it was supposed to. The fact that it rained the night before and the ground already was saturated certainly didn't help. Those residents believe the fourth-heaviest rainfall in the past 30 years was no match for man's engineering.

Others weren't so satisfied. Hopper Road residents anxiously watched Cape LaCroix Creek, another part of the flood-control project, come licking at their back porches.

And city officials explained that the project, after 10 years of construction, still isn't finished. Legal battles over property condemnation delayed the detention basin for several years.

Mayor Al Spradling III and others say we won't truly see what the project is capable of handling until the basin is complete. That could be next summer. Maybe the heaviest rains will hold off until then.

But even if Walker Branch and Cape LaCroix perform up to expectations down the road, that's little comfort to the many homeowners and renters who sloshed through flooded basements and motorists who pushed their soaked cars out of intersections in the rain's aftermath.

Areas nowhere near the flood-control project, such as the intersection of West End Boulevard and Independence Street, were under 2 or more feet of water.

William Vaughn, development services coordinator for the city's Division of Planning Services, explained that the flood-control project really was aimed at protecting only about 7 percent of the town. The number could be higher.

Even so, isn't it bizarre for high land to flood? That intersection sits well above the Mississippi River.

And a whitewater rafting enthusiast looking for excitement could have taken on the challenge of conquering Broadway at mid-morning that particular Thursday. A chamber of commerce group touring the KFVS tower wondered how to get across to its next stop, the Southeast Missourian building, without being washed down to Cairo, Ill.

Yes, the Walker Branch project may have done what it was supposed to do. Yes, projects that will be used to stop disasters that happen only once every few decades are too expensive to be realistic.

But the flash flood of 2001 certainly should give city officials pause and force them to look at flood control for all of Cape Girardeau and consider whether money spent on paving creeks and separating water and sewer lines was spent effectively.