|
controls whether or not levees get built or raised.
If you would have guessed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers holds sway over such matters, guess again. According to Joe Kellett, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers St. Louis District deputy district engineer, the authority to issue permits to construct levees lies with the states, which generally delegate the right to the local county government.
“The only thing that the Corps of Engineers issues a permit for is what’s called a 404 permit, and that’s for any construction that would affect a wetland,” Kellett said. So, for example, in the case of the St. Charles County, Mo. levee that was built recently, the Corps of Engineers had absolutely no permitting responsibility.”
Kellett says the law differs between Missouri and Illinois, but both take a similar approach. In Missouri, developers of a levee must show that it will not raise floodwaters by more than one foot. In Illinois, the standard is one-tenth of a foot. The problem with this approach, he says, is that no one is considering the cumulative effect of the levees and that the water has to go somewhere.
Steve Nagle is the director of community planning for the East-West Gateway Council of Governments.
“I think not only just common sense but also modern hydrological theory would show that if you take water and channel it and reduce its capability to spread out over a floodplain, you will increase the velocity, raise the level and create uncertainty regarding where floods are going to occur,” Nagle said.
According to Nagle, five large, urban levees have been built in the St. Louis metro area and one has been raised since the catastrophic flood of 1993. The Park 370 levee was built along the Missouri River in St. Charles County, Mo. to enable developments such as Park 370 (an industrial park). The Old Town St. Charles levee was also built along the Missouri River in St. Charles County. New levees were constructed along the Meramec River in Valley Park, Mo., and along the Mississippi River at the cities of Festus, Crystal City and St. Genevieve, Mo.
Les Sterman is executive director of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments.
Perhaps most notably, the Monarch levee along the Missouri River near Chesterfield, Mo. was raised. The Chesterfield Valley was flooded in 1993, causing millions of dollars worth of damage. Since then, the area has been rebuilt with a variety of developments -including what claims to be the nation’s largest strip mall, Chesterfield Commons.
|
“We (the Council) are not fans of developing in flood plains,” said Sterman. “That’s really not good practice overall. However, when you have an historical situation like we do in the Metro East - where these levees have been there for a century and there’s so much critical industry and 150,000 people in harm’s way - you really don’t have any choice. You have to rebuild those levees. But in cases like Chesterfield or St. Peters, where you built a levee to build a strip mall, that doesn’t seem like good practice. It increases flood levels and it affects people upstream and downstream. I think there’s no question about it. We could tell when the levee broke in Winfield, for example, the predicted flood crest here in St. Louis went down by two feet. So we know that there is that effect and that’s something that as a region and as states, I think we need to address.”
Kellett says the Corps of Engineers has been studying the middle Mississippi River valley and will soon be ready to release that study to the public. According to Kellett, this “comprehensive plan” looks at a variety of scenarios including raising levees, removing levees and setting levees back away from the river in assessing what can and cannot be done along the upper Mississippi.
What’s not being done, however, is to look at the cumulative effect of the multiple levees that have been built. Kellett says there was a Senate resolution that called for the Corps of Engineers to study that subject, but it has never been funded so the mandate sits in limbo.
“It’s one thing to look at each individual levee and what its effect is,” said Kellett. “It’s another thing to look at the cumulative impact of all of those levees. It’s not only the levees that you have to consider, though. Any time you build a bridge, you have abutments - and those abutments infringe on the floodway and slow down the water flowing through, creating a funnel. You have to take a look at all of those items. I think the biggest thing that the Corps study does is that it allows you not only to know what’s there, but also to know what you can do and what the impact is of anything additional that you might want to do.”
Kellett says the cost of the cumulative impact study was estimated at $700,000 in 2004. But he says the problem is larger than just the St. Louis metro area, and that the metro area needs to be looking at the entire upper Mississippi River to develop a plan that Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin all agree to.
“When you look at the billions and billions of dollars behind those levees and the infrastructures that they protect, along with the navigation along the river, $700,000 seems like a fairly small investment to come away with some ideas and answers on what we can do,” said Kellett. “I’m certain there may be people who may not like all of the answers, but I certainly think we’re all better off if people really understand the true facts rather than trying to proceed on rumor and innuendo.”
Sterman says most reasonable observers say that the ever-growing number of levees is causing more serious floods to occur more often.
“When 500-year floods start happening every 23rd year,” he said, “I think we’ve got to worry.”
|
