Flood level falls at foot of the Arch

By Tim Bryant
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Four days after the Mississippi River began its retreat from this spring's flood in northeast Missouri, the water level fell Tuesday at the Arch.

By next Tuesday, the river will slip below the 30-foot flood stage at St. Louis, the National Weather Service calculates.

To the north, in Pike and Lincoln counties, the Mississippi will remain high until July 14, the Weather Service said. But major flooding in the hard-hit towns of Clarksville, Winfield and Foley should end this week.

The Army Corps of Engineers said the river may drop enough to allow the locks and dams at Winfield and Clarksville to reopen Friday.

Some flood victims went home Tuesday.

"People that can are getting back to their homes and are already starting to clean up," said Kelly Hardcastle, emergency director for Lincoln County.

Many flood veterans had employed the standard strategy: Move out belongings. Remove doors and put them in storage. Open the windows. Evacuate.

Leaving doors and windows open allows floodwater to recede quickly and air to circulate, retarding mold growth.

Hardcastle urged people to stay out of the floodwater, noting that the river had flowed over sewage lagoons and had picked up fuel spills and other toxins on its way south.

"We're a pretty clean society," he said. "For us to get in that water, we could get sick."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency have opened a disaster relief center at the Winfield-Foley fire station on Highway 47. Flood victims may go there to get answers about assistance programs, low-interest loans and flood insurance.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture waived in flood-affected areas its rule that gives food stamp recipients only 10 days to request replacement stamps. Waiver areas includes Jefferson, Lincoln, Pike, St. Charles and Ste. Genevieve counties, plus the city of St. Louis.

In Chester, Ill., the Mississippi had yet to relax its grip. The river was forecast to crest there today at more than 12 feet over flood stage. Officials in Randolph County monitored sand boils along the Prairie du Rocher levee at the Kaskaskia Lock and Dam and at Fort de Chartres.

"At this point we're not in a 'gung ho, we've-got-a-problem' mode because we don't," said Larry Willis, spokesman for the county's emergency management agency.

Officials also considered pumping water from inside the levee back into the Mississippi. The water is coming from a pressure-release well and is spewing into farm land and forcing road closings.

"There are literally no homes in danger anywhere in the county," Willis said.