NEW JEOPARDY FOR AFFECTED AREASPotential for more flood danger seen

Published 11:27 am Friday, January 27, 2012

Damage from last year’s record spring floods could leave many people along the Mississippi River in even more danger this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

The Corps said it’s assessing the damage to levees, structures and navigation channels and will begin notifying affected communities in February. The announcement comes as work on sections of mainline levees at Buck Chute and Lake Albemarle north of Vicksburg inch toward completion.

“We want to identify every place where we have problem areas,” Corps spokesman Bob Anderson said. “Once we have those identified, we get to those as quickly as we can before the next big flood. Hopefully, it doesn’t come this year.

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“If it does come this year, that’s when those communities in the areas of greater risk would need to be notified,” he said.

Congress gave the Corps $802 million in December to fix levees up and down the river.

Identifying the weakest points and letting people know where they are is part of that, said Anderson, a spokesman for the Corps’ Mississippi Valley Division, based in Vicksburg.

Assessments began as soon as the floodwaters went down, he said, and repairs are under way in parts of Missouri. Repair of levees north of Vicksburg involves rebuilding sections where sand boils cropped up before and during the river’s historic rise in May. It crested at 57.1 feet in Vicksburg, or 14.1 feet above flood stage.

Relief wells and a 1,700-foot berm are in place to control seepage at Buck Chute, west of Eagle Lake. About 1,500 feet of weak earth is being reinforced at Lake Albemarle. A $3.1 million contract to do both areas started in September and work is about 75 percent complete, Corps officials said about two weeks ago.

A long-range goal to raise about 11 miles of levee between the two locations depends on funding, though one segment is under contract, Corps officials have said.

“Each damaged location has been characterized by its likelihood of failure and potential consequences if there is a failure,” said Scott Whitney, regional flood risk manager for the Division. He said the Corps will use a web-based application called CorpsMap and information papers to send out the information.

The Corps said in December that there was a significant risk of more flooding along the Birds Point Floodway, where it blew three holes in a levee to relieve pressure as floods threatened nearby Cairo, Ill. The floodway levee is designed to be breached in cases of extreme flooding.

It has been rebuilt to 55 feet, but still needs to be raised to 62.5 feet, he said.

“A couple more areas that we haven’t fixed but know where they are, are where the river tried to change course,” Anderson said.

He said the biggest of those was just north of Tiptonville, Tenn. Another, less seriously damaged area is north of Louisiana’s Old River Control Structure, built in 1962 to keep the Atchafalaya River from capturing the Mississippi.

The bank there had been covered with concrete mats tied together with steel wire to keep the current from scouring out the riverbank.

“The force of the river was so strong along that bend that it tore up some of those revetments and gouged out a large section of the bank,” Anderson said.

Other Corps divisions are in charge of repairs along the Ohio and Missouri rivers.

Most of the damage along the Mississippi River is from St. Louis south, he said.

By and large, the levees and other structures did what they were supposed to, he said

“The river was constantly attacking,” Anderson said. “It pummeled the system itself, but it never did knock it down.”