St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 1

Weeding Out Perfect Lawns A new school of thought holds that keeping a manicured lawn is as politically correct and as compulsive as smoking cigarettes EVERYDAY ID SPORTS Home Field Is Tonic For Cards ic LOCAL Novelists Panting For Success ib NATION Court Turns Down Adoption Plea 3A Industry Steels For Walkout Steel makers make plans to shut down furnaces as a strike by the United Steelworkers of America looms. BUSINESS 8C ST.LD posrasPM In SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1993 VOL: 115, NO. 212 5-STAR (3) Copyright 1993 si' fa Sfl D(SS'SD1U(gftD(o)j1 Mr Ai SI 'X. J- fl Jr'i" I y. 1 i '1 i 1 1 if 6 Levee Gives Way In Chesterfield By Virgil Tipton Of the Post-Dispatch Staff The Mississippi and Missouri rivers punched the St.

Louis area hard on Friday, tearing into a levee and flooding Highway 40 at Chesterfield, closing the McKin-ley and Lewis and Clark bridges and threatening to rip propane tanks from pipelines on the riverfront. The specter of the rising Missouri sent guards scrambling to empty St. Louis County's jail in Chesterfield, which would be awash in as much as 8 feet of water if the area flooded. Some of the 450 inmates landed in another county building a recreation center. In St.

Louis, forecasters predicted that the Mississippi would reach a record 49.3 feet on Monday 19.3 feet above flood stage. The new prediction spurred workers and volunteers to pile another foot of sandbags on the River Des Peres levee. The new work will leave 7 feet of rock and sandbags stacked atop the soaked levee. Elsewhere, rivers mangled whatever got in tneir way: As the peak of the Missouri flood plowed eastward toward St. Charles, the river ripped chunks of concrete from U.S.

54 near Jefferson City and jeopardized a bridge carrying the highway over the Katy Trail. The Missouri plucked more burial vaults from a cemetery in northwestern Missouri. In St. Charles County, the Missouri claimed more roads and threatened to conquer a sandbag wall in See FLOOD, Page 5 Sandbagged South City Flees Propane Threat By Christine Bertelson Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Floodwater wrenched 12 tanks of flammable liquid propane from their moorings at the Phillips Pipeline Co. station at 8722 South Broadway Friday, forcing the evacuation of dozens of residents within a half-mile radius of the tanks.

City and county police went door-to-door Friday evening, warning people in several dozen homes in south St. Louis and Lemay'to leave. Authorities used Bi-State buses and emergency vehicles to evacuate residents who could not drive out. Residents were told to drive to an emergency shelter set up by the Red Cross at Blow Elementary School at 516 Loughborough Avenue. About 75 people were at the shelter Friday night.

Evacuees were told to expect to stay at least overnight, but they may be out for days. The area is bounded on the north by Poepping Street in St. Louis, on the east by Virginia Avenue in St. Louis and Military Road in Lemay and on the south by Horn Avenue See TANKS, Page 4 i 3: 1 ') i. Kevin ManningPost-Dispatch Highway workers putting concrete lane dividers down Friday to keep the rising Missouri River from flooding Highway 40 (Interstate 64) just east of the Daniel Boone Bridge in west St.

Louis County. The water was a foot below the road. 3 Closed Bridges Will Tangle Traffic i Gumbo Exodus: River prompts corporate jets at Spirit of St. Louis Airport to leave 8C i Scam Protection: County executive wants permits required for work on flood-damaged buildings 5B i Reception Reroute: Rebecca Mosele and Joseph Mills should have no trouble getting to their wedding today. Getting to the reception is a different story 5B By Daniel R.

Browning Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Rising floodwater on Friday shut down three bridges that link St. Louis and the Metro East area. The closings squeezed traffic onto the Chain of Rocks Bridge in the north and the already crowded Martin Luther King and Poplar Street bridges downtown. The Lewis and Clark bridges, which link St. Charles and St: Louis counties with Alton, were ordered closed after 7 p.m.

Friday because water had covered a four-mile stretch of roadway linking the two bridges. About 20,500 vehicles cross the bridges daily. Also closed was the McKinley Bridge at St. Louis. Travelers who normally use the Lewis and Clark bridges should use Interstate 270, which crosses over the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

People going from Missouri to Alton should exit from 1-270 onto Illinois Route 3, head north, then follow Route 143 into Alton. Vic Modeer, an engineer with the Illinois Highway Department, said the detour should be a minor inconvenience, although traffic is expected to back up a bit on See BRIDGES, Page 5 INDEX Top Democrats Settle On Deficit Reduction Business 8-14C Classified Everyday 1-10D Movie Timetable 9D Obituaries 4B Sports 1-7C Television 8D EDITORIAL PAGE For The Missouri House Minority Athletes Make The Grade Compiled From News Services WASHINGTON The administration and top Democrats announced agreement on the outlines of a deficit-reduction bill Friday night. It calls for a 4.3-cent increase in the gasoline tax but falls a bit short of the president's goal to cut the deficit bv $500 billion. The negotiators also agreed to back date a tax increase on wealthy Americans to Jan. 1, a move that will raise an additional $6 billion in revenue.

Last week, they had tentatively agreed to back date it to March 1. House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, said Friday night, "A couple of issues remain open, but the overwhelming number of issues have been resolved." At the White House, a spokesman for President Bill Clinton said: "There's agreement in principle, and we're very encouraged by that." Foley and Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, D-Maine, refused to disclose details of the package, but both predicted that the legislation would pass the House and Senate next week. Foley and Mitchell said a finished product would be ready for presentation to Senate-House conferees on Monday, and that details would be made public then.

Negotiators and aides were to work over the weekend to fill in the remaining blanks and complete the calculations on revenue gains and See TAX, Page 4 6B I i- WEATHER MetroLink Is Off And Running Parties At 10 Stations Celebrate Its Debut By Virginia Baldwin Hick Of the Post-Dispatch Staff MetroLink, the long-awaited light-rail system, takes off this morning with parties awaiting riders at 10 of the stops. The grand opening will begin at 10:30 a.m. at Union Station with performers and free soft drinks. Ceremoniously, officials will flip the switch at 11:30 a.m. to open the system to riders.

The party at Union Station continues until 2 p.m. Today through Monday, passengers on the $351 million system will ride free. At many stops today, clowns, musicians, balloon artists and other colorful characters will greet riders. The grand opening is a production of Bi-State Development Agency and Citizens for Modern Transit. John K.

Leary executive director of Bi-State, hopes that entire families, babies to grandparents, will hop on the train and stop off at a party or two, getting used to the station stops as well as the train itself. The MetroLink Sweepstakes will award two grand prizes with a drawing at 3 p.m.: two roundtrip tickets on TWA to London and two to Paris. Entries are one a person at each station and are available only at the party stops. The St. Louis Chain of Rocks Railroad will sell commemorative Scattered Storms Local Mctioh Bosnia Agrees To Plan For Three Ethnic States tj I FORECAST Today Scattered storms, possibly heavy rain.

High 91. Low 73. Scattered rain tonight. Sunday Scattered storms. High 89.

Other Weather, 20B Gary BohnPost-Dispatch A woman waiting for a MetroLink test run to pass earlier this month so that she could rollerskate across the tracks on Boyle Avenue near the Washington University Medical Center. The transit line opens officially today, with free rides for three days. out the agreement of the two others. The Bosnian government is particularly worried about the possibility that Serbian and Croatian parts may split off to join up with Serbia and Croatia proper. International inediators said further negotiations were needed on the internal boundaries between the republics and legal issues such as creating a human rigMs court.

The statement by Lord Owen, the European Community envoy, and U.N. representative Thorvald Stol-tenberg said the leaders of the Bosni-See ACCORD, Page 4 POST-DISPATCH WEATHERBIRD "IQUI FAT U.f GENEVA (AP) Bosnia's outgunned Muslim-led government abandoned its efforts to hold the region together and agreed Friday to divide the former Yugoslav republic into three ethnic states. The preliminary accord sets a framework for division favored by ethnic Serbs and Croats, who control nearly all of Bosnia after more than 16 months of civil war that has claimed between 140,000 and 200,000 lives. The war has left the capital, Sarajevo, in ruins. Under the accord, no republic could withdraw from the union with- medals showing a MetroLink car on one side and the system's first route on the other.

The medals will be offered at the Laclede's Landing station in a variety of metals and prices, from $1 for an aluminum version to $45 for a pure silver one. Besides Union Station, the following stations will have parties from noon to 4 p.m.: North Hanley, southeast corner of Interstate 70 and North Hanley Road, where Bi-State and KATZ-AM See TRANSIT, Page 4 9.