St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 15

FRIDAY, JULY 16, 1993 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 15A THE FLOOD OF '93 'Levee Loss Of Wetlands Blamed For Flooding ly, you get stark reminders, like we're presently experiencing, thatv despite spending vast, vast, vast sums of money for flood protection, we're really losing the Back to Nature? To relieve the flooding the natural floodways on the rivers i should be partly restored, scientists said. "'id' "I'm not advocating that we jerk out all the levees and channelization and return to the days of Lewis and Clark," Stucky said. But scientists and engineers have the knowledge-1 and tools to come up with a reasonable compromise that would restore much of the rivers' flood-carrying cfcni pacity, he said. Iv.

"That would not only move solve a lot of the damages we're experiencing now, but it would also allow the river to restore some of the, important ecosystems that it has lost. to development over time," Stuckj said. 01r Havera agrees. Such a move could boost recreation and tourism. "In the Illinois Valley, restoring some of the drainage and wetland districts would be a sensible cal and economic solution," he "It's probably wiser use of the land than trying to grow crops under conr, ditions where the water has to be pumped OUt." ml The scientists admitted that maty ing the river more natural is basically a political problem, pitting local ers and development interests against nature.

"And there are very few politicians who have the spine to take something like that on," Stucky said. "But un- less something is done, the situation is only going to get worse." Environmental groups are picking up the challenge. At a news conference, Thursday under the Arch, the Sierra Club and the Missouri Coalition for the Envi- ronment called on Congress to protect wetlands, reform the flood insur-ance program and promote water and1 soil conservation on farms. "It's time to prevent a repeat of this tragedy," said Bill Redding of the Sierra Club. "We need to provide future hope and safety for the region's farmers and urban NEWS ANALYSIS By William Allen Post-Dispatch Science Writer ''Levee anarchy" and massive loss of he natural sponges and pressure-relief points on the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers are to blame at least as much as heavy rain for the Great Flood of 1993, scientists say.

"The water just doesn't have the places to go it used to," said Steve Havera, an ecologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, in Havana, 111 Slowly, almost imperceptibly, human activities have taken away the natural flood-carrying capacity of the rivers. Levees and other attempts to constrain the rivers make it possible for the same amount of water to produce greater and greater floods, Havera and other scientists said in recent interviews. "The water has to go someplace, so it goes higher and higher," said Norm Stucky, a biologist with the Missouri Conservation Department in Jefferson City. "That means flood damages are greater and greater, despite the tremendous effort put forth in name of flood control." Biologists scoff at calling a flood like the one now surging through the region a "natural disaster." ''When you work in or live in or use the flood plain, you have to understand that part of the function of a river is that it does flood," Havera said. "We try to prevent that 'till events like this force us to realize that this is a natural part of the river." The Natural River To understand why changing the face of the river worsens flooding, first a bit of, explanation about how a natural river works: In a nutshell, a river has its own complex set of pressure-release valves and sponges.

These include wetlands, chutes, backwaters and side channels. These features absorb and slowly guide a great deal of water when a river gets a large influx of rain from its basin. An added benefit of wetlands in non-flood times is that they filter and clean the water. mwwSMUmm mS mlVM Larry WilhamsPost-Dispatch Rushing floodwater from the North River topping a levee earlier this month and inundating farmland north of Hannibal, Mo. That's happening around farms as well as urban areas.

"It's an unwinnable battle against Mother Nature," Stucky said. An added problem is the changed nature of the river basin that broad area of land that sheds its rain into the river. Put simply, what once was water-absorbent forest and prairie is now prime runoff surface: street, parking lot, lawn and farmland. Because of flood deposits, the flood plain had rich soils that attracted farmers. And its flat land attracted development interests.

"If you're going to maximize use of the flood plain, you're going to have to launch into battle against Mother Nature," Stucky said. "Unfortunate- River of almost 3,600 miles of main-river and auxiliary levees. The higher the levee, the greater the flood protection, at least in theory. But some engineers protest that high levees enclose a river to such a great degree that its water level rises high above the level of the bank. north of Louisiana, Mo.

Missouri lost 87 percent of its wetlands; Iowa, 89 percent; and Illinois, 85 percent, Covington said. Much of that loss was along the rivers responsible for this year's flood. "When you take that many wetlands away, you have floods like this," Covington said. Levee systems along many parts of the river are constantly rising to meet the demand of flood protection. Stucky calls this "levee anarchy." "I saw it in 73 and then in '86," he said.

"One levee district adds 2 feet to its levee and says, 'Ours will hold and our neighbors' will break first." "With the next flood, the neighbor gets blasted and decides to put their levee up 4 feet," Stucky said. Holding Back The Levees are dams made out of earth and sand, built parallel to a river bank to prevent flooding. As early as 2,000 B.C., the Egyptians built levees along the banks of the Nile. The levee system for the Mississippi, begun in New Orleans in 1718, is the most extensive in the world, consisting 142 Years Ago, A Civil Engineer Warned Against System Of Levees river only taketh The Human Hand It's no coincidence that the states hardest hit by the Great Flood of 1993 are the ones that all but eliminated their wetlands as Midwestern-ers moved to intensive farming and engineers channelized and leveed the great rivers. Over the past century and a half, Missouri, Illinois and Iowa led the pack of the lower 48 states that lost more than half its wetlands, said Phil Covington.

Covington is a biologist at the Missouri Conservation Department's Ted Shanks Conservation Area, of '93. "They've been referring to this as a disaster caused by nature," Pryor said. "This is human caused, and that's the real disaster here." Every flood brings another round of criticism, said Gary Dyhouse, hy-drologist for St. Louis District of the corps. "People like Charlie Belt come out and say the corps is making little floods into big floods," Dyhouse said.

"They say tear down the levees, and you won't have floods. That's a bunch of baloney. "If you tore them down, you'd have a reduction of 2 to 3 feet in the crest levels, but you'd have a river 10 miles wide. Drive across the Poplar Street bridge, there's 86,000 acres of land over there East St. Louis, Granite City, Caseyville, Alorton, Ca-hokia, all those little communities that would have 10 feet of water now if not for the federal levee." Dyhouse said another federal project the 36 flood-control reservoirs built in the Mississippi Basin above St.

Louis make up for any crest increase caused by the levee system. "At St. Louis, they knock off at least 3 feet, usually more," he said. "Flood-control reservoirs reduce flooding here by more than the levees raise the flood." And if levees result in flood plain development, that's a concern for the local governments, which pass the enabling zoning laws, he said. "The federal government is not in the land-use planning business," Dyhouse said.

"All the corps levees The natural river also has a forgiving flood plain, a corridor over which it carries floodwater. The water, as needed, can expand like a balloon over the flood plain. "It's long been said that the1 river giveth and the river taketh away," Stucky said. "In a natural, unaltered stream, while the river was eroding or taking away in one place, it was putting back someplace else." In other words, it created those wetlands, backwaters and other features. With such features in place, water spreads with less violence.

"Man has come along and attempted to control the river," he said. "Generally, the natural function of the river to give has been removed. Now we have a situation where the they've been referring to this as a disaster caused by nature. This is human caused, and that's the real disaster here, ff ROGER PRYOR, Coalition for the Environment human misery caused by the flooding, their editorial writers seek a solution that doesn't involve more dam or levee building. "When the region has a chance to dry out, maybe there will be time for some soul-searching about the limits of engineering solutions to nature's unpredictability," said the Milwaukee Journal.

Geologist Charles B. Belt Jr. of St. Louis University studied the flow of the Mississippi during the flood of 1973 compared to flows in pre-levee days. The 73 flood crested at 43.3 feet at St.

Louis, a record broken Thursday, but Belt said previous floods actually had more water. "The levees in 73 caused the water level to be about 8 feet higher than it would have been in the 19th century," Belt said. "Floods are not caused by man they're caused by rain. But the fact of the matter is, in 73 the flood record here at St. Louis was manmade." Roger Pryor of the Coalition for the Environment in St.

Louis says much the same thing about the Flood Maximum expected flood level This has been the case on the Mississippi, where the extensive levee system has raised the;" overall level of the river; higher and higher levees to be built. Some embankments along the river now reach 50 feet or more. UitV lui i r'f yi-i' Auarana river level 1 1 Rachel Powell end Seth FeaeterThe New York Timet they contribute to flood height, which causes the other levees upstream fail." Pryor and other environmentalists say the government should er federal flood insurance programs to discourage building on flood plains. They also suggest thaf the, levee system be rebuilt to allow part of flood plain to revert to wetlands act as relief valves for Fanning and recreation may be lowed but no structures, Original ground level By Tom Uhlenbrock Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Charles S. Ellet Jr.

was ahead of his time 142 years ahead of his time. A civil engineer, Ellet wrote a report to Congress in 1851 that criticized the building of levees in the Mississippi River Basin. The report said the levees produced a damaging double whammy: They increased the height of flood levels by constricting the river and forcing water to flow higher and faster. And they encouraged development of the flood plain. The farms, businesses and houses that grew on the flood plain behind the levees became sitting ducks for the flooding that inevitably flowed over or broke through.

But Ellet assumed that the building of levees could not be reversed, so he concluded that stronger and higher levees would have to be built by the Army Corps of Engineers. That became national policy a policy that today is under question as yet another "100-year flood" wreaks havoc in states along the Mississippi, racking up damages calculated in the billions of dollars. Kevin Coyle, president of American Rivers, a national conservation group, said, "The engineering by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was supposed to reduce flooding, has instead made flooding problems worse over the years and has given people living near the rivers a false sense of security. "So development proceeds.

As newspapers throughout the Midwest report daily accounts of the Mississippi Levee (15 to 50 feet high) Drainage ditch Sources: Encyclopedia Americana, Army Corps were built to protect development thaf's been there for a long time. Granted, though, once you get protection for land behind a levee it becomes more attractive to development." Belt says: "I'm not advocating tearing down the levees; I'm not advocating blowing up the dams. But should we continue pouring money into this system?" Dyhouse said the corps has 41 levees in the St. Louis district, which ol Engineers runs from the mouth of the Ohio River 50 miles south of Cape Girardeau to 10 miles downstream of Hannibal. None has failed, he said, while private levees have dropped like dominoes.

But Pryor, director of the Coalition for the Environment, said the government projects have played a vital role in the destruction totals. "The corps builds better levees; they are spending our money," he said. "Those levees don't fail, but Hot Lines Help Tourism Keep Head Above Water Loses Punch As It Dampens Dixie Ihe upper Mississippi is like By John Gilardi 1993, Reuters News Service HOUSTON The Mississippi River may be raging over its banks in the Midwest, but the mighty river will swallow the floodwater without much effort as it moves south toward the Gulf of Mexico, federal officials said. "The upper Mississippi is like a dirt road. When it enters the lower Mississippi, it turns into an eight-lane super highway," said Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the Army Corp of Engineers in Memphis.

"The river down here has a lot of capacity." In fact, the Mississippi River grows rapidly in size about a hundred miles south of St. Louis near the Illinois town of Cairo where the Ohio River flows into it, increasing the amount of water the Mississippi can handle. From that area south, the river continues to grow in size both in width and depth until it flows into the Gulf of Mexico more than a hundred miles south of New Orleans. 1 The river drains 31 states and two Canadian provinces. It flowed past St.

Louis on Thursday at a rate of 800,000 cubic feet per second 1 1 times above normal and about four times the amount of water that plunges over Niagara Falls. But to do similar damage, the flooding would have to grow to about 2.5 million cubic feet per for water to flow easily at about 960,000 cubic feet per second, Flowers said. Additionally, several structures exist in Louisiana to divert the river's overflow into other rivers and wetlands, said Jim Addison, a corps spokesman in New Orleans. One of the key projects, the Old River Control Structure north of Baton Rouge, diverts 30 percent of the Mississippi's water through the Atchafalaya River every day. The Old River facility was authorized in 1954 to keep the river from changing course to follow the Atchafalaya to Morgan City, a shift that would have left New Orleans and Baton Rouge landlocked, Addison said.

The structure also plays a major role in preventing downriver flooding. But the lower Mississippi has suffered severe flooding in the past. In 1927, an antiquated levee system failed to hold water as the river spread about 20 miles wide in some areas near Memphis and floodwater rose 20 feet above the riverbanks in areas along the river south to New Orleans. But improvements to the levee system helped contain floodwater during a 1937 flood and also a flood in 1983. 3 the city have been untrue.

(. nA He says a national newspaper rei I ported earlier this week that there was an outbreak of hepatitis in St. Charles, "and that's just not true." Potential visitors to St. Louis also, may have a skewed perspective how safe it is to travel here, Staff at the Convention and Visi-. tors Commission said Thursday that more than 1,000 people have called since Friday saying they had heard that: The Arch, at 630 feet, was r' underwater.

The baseball Cardinals couldn't play because Busch Stadium was underwater. Animals at the St. Louis Zoo had to be evacuated. Apparently staffers were able to clear up the concerns. Operators at major St.

Louis attractions said Thursday that business had suffered. Tommy Robertson of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed information for this story. I By Cynthia Todd Of the Post-Dispatch Staff While legions of sandbaggers battle the raging Missouri and Mississippi rivers, tourism officials face their own fight: Proving that only part of the state is waterlogged. The Missouri Division of Tourism will establish a toll-free number starting Monday to provide up-to-date information about statewide travel. You can call 1-800-755-1200 between 8 a.m.

and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Illinois also has a tourism hot line staffed between 8 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. daily.

It is 1-800-553-5588. Missouri is setting up the hot line to counteract a downturn in tourism that some link to misconceptions produced by the national media. In St. Charles, Stephen Powell, director of the Greater St. Charles Convention and Visitors Bureau, says tourism is down by as much as 50 percent.

He says some reports about a dirt road. When it enters the lower Mississippi, it turns into an eight-lane super highway, ff BOB ANDERSON, Army Corp of Engineers, Memphis second when it reaches Vicksburg, and more than 3 million cubic feet per second near New Orleans, officials in the cities said. "It's a significant step up in this area," said Donald Flowers, an official at the corps office in Vicksburg, headquarters for the lower Mississippi region. "We won't have anything even close to that amount when the water gets down here," he said. "We can handle it fine as it stands now.

It's just a much bigger river down here." The Mississippi expands from 1,950 feet wide and 65 feet deep near St. Louis to more than 3,200 feet wide and 125 feet deep near Vicksburg. Even in Cairo, the Mississippi expands to 2,900 feet wide and 90 feet deep, which allows.