With floodwaters from the Mississippi River still nearly halfway halfway up the old Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Depot on Levee Street, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said it will not extend the city’s floodwall to protect the 104-year-old building.

“There are no plans to extend the wall past either museum,” spokesman Ben Robinson of the Corps Vicksburg District said of the former depot, which was on its way to becoming a transportation museum when the river began lapping out of its banks, and the Corps’ own interpretive museum, which includes the retired MV Mississippi IV and an adjacent building under construction.

Muddy water took over the museum area, just east of the Yazoo Diversion Canal and west of Washington Street when the Mississippi River at Vicksburg climbed past the 50-foot mark, seven feet above flood stage, on May 8.

A part of Levee Street just south of the depot is protected by a floodwall built by the Corps after the historic Flood of 1927, which topped out a level more than a foot below this year’s crest on May 19 of 57.1 feet in Vicksburg.

For Lamar Roberts, the director of the Battlefield Museum who was nearing his years-long pursuit of putting a transportation museum in the depot when the water rose, the Corps decision means another government-sized headache.

“It doesn’t make sense not to do it,” he said. “But, if they did decide, it’d be 20 years before they got around to it. I guess that’s their little red wagon, and they’re going to pull it.”

Roberts said he has not been in the depot since flooding began, only watching from afar as the bottom two floors became mired in the water and muck of the river.

He said insurance on the building won’t cover the cost of replacing wood and any drywall not moved up to the upper floor by contractors at work when the water came, he said.

On paper, the Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Center is still set to open in April 2012. How fast the surrounding property dries out will dictate the timeline, particularly between Levee Street and railroad tracks where the Corps wants to install a small-scale model of the river to attract children to play in it.

Project manager Mike Renacker said he’ll travel to Mud Island River Park in Memphis to pick up cleanup pointers from officials who dealt with the rising river days before Vicksburg. The Memphis park reopened Tuesday.

“That’s what I’ve got in mind,” he said. “We will have to wait and see what happens with this river.”

The Mississippi River fell to 54.1 feet in Vicksburg late Saturday, down four-tenths in 24 hours. Estimates predict minimal drops in the river through mid-June, when levels are forecast to fall back below the 43-foot flood stage.

Estimates of the floodwater’s spread in Vicksburg and Warren County fell short of Corps estimates earlier this month. Levees built by businesses and private citizens have hemmed in commercial strips at the Port of Vicksburg and on both ends of U.S. 61, closest to the river and its low spots that are prone to backwater inundation. North of the city at Eagle Lake, properties closest to the edge of the oxbow took on water during an engineered rise in levels to aid levee reinforcements.

In flood-prone Kings, Waltersville and Ford subdivisions off North Washington Street, the outlook is dire. Many of the 350 parcels are flooded up to rooftops, with power lines hanging perilously close to the muddy mix of water and debris. Inspections necessary to reconnect flooded homes, churches and businesses power and comply with city floodplain ordinances won’t mean anything by themselves, Building and Inspections Director Victor Gray-Lewis said.

“It’s all private property,” said Gray-Lewis, a veteran of past battles that have followed past floods. “It’s the same procedure as ’08 — nothing’s changed. People are going to have to decide what they want to do with their property.”

The 2008 flood displaced 145 people from 101 homes inside the city, mostly in the three north Vicksburg subdivisions along North Washington Street. Post-flood, a few homes were raised, but several couldn’t be reconnected to utilities or receive city building permits because damage totaled more than 50 percentt of the home’s value. In 2009, about seven homeowners who returned did so after waiving off all future claims for disaster assistance, Gray-Lewis said.

This year’s flood has displaced 3,202 people in Vicksburg and Warren County, according to figures compiled by state and federal emergency management officials.

In Green Meadow subdivision, a levee built by nearby businesses and residents held back tides that turned farmland farther south in Yokena into inland lakes. It’s something of a source of pride for Gary Pettway, a lifer of the subdivision that tilts toward the river off U.S. 61 South.

“As you can see, it held it back,” Pettway said. “FEMA should pay the businesses’ expenses.”

The river’s gradual fall means a rest for John Scroggins, whose earthen wall around his Magnolia Road home took the river’s best shot and remains intact.

“I’m just sitting back now,” said Scroggins, a retired civil engineer fresh off of several weeks of only a few hours of sleep each night as he pumped seep water away from the house.

He also spent some time entertaining news reporters.

“A little girl from ABC News walked right on top the levee,” Scroggins said. “Next day, she was in Lafayette, La., on TV. But, I haven’t needed nothing. That’s what you do in a flood fight — you do what you can.”