Levees Hold as Mississippi Heads for a Broader, Deeper Channel

Record-setting floodwaters slid past strained levees Monday along the final 30-mile stretch of the Mississippi River before it flows into a broader, deeper channel at the southern tip of Illinois.

“All the levees are in really good shape,” said Bill Shult, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Memphis, Tenn.

“But they expect it to be weeks before there’s an appreciable fall in the river level. It’s going to be a very, very slow recession,” he said.

Officials said that except for a few stray leaks, levees kept water from farms, and Cape Girardeau’s 54-foot concrete flood wall protected the city of 35,000 people about 30 miles upstream from Cairo, Ill. The river’s level had ebbed 2 1/2 inches since it crested Sunday just shy of 48 feet.

A makeshift sign taped to the clock pedestal in the middle of Cape Girardeau’s Main Street read: “We love our flood wall.”

When the river reaches Cairo, near to where it merges with the Ohio River, the natural riverbed is four to five times wider and many feet deeper than it is upstream, Shult said.

Brenda Miller, a city spokeswoman in Cairo, said officials expect no problems. “We have good levees,” she said.

The Mississippi was expected to crest Friday in Memphis at 29.4 feet, well below danger levels.

“The worst is over,” said Maj. Randall Carden, a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers.

Elsewhere, officials of Des Moines’ water system lifted the last restriction on water use--a ban on lawn watering--for 250,000 people, 30 days after the Raccoon River flooded the main treatment plant.

“This is the last hurrah,” said water plant director L. D. McMullen. “From a consumer’s standpoint, everything is normal.”

The Mississippi, which backed up into the River Des Peres, was down an additional 1.3 feet Monday at St. Louis, close to the 43.3-foot level reached in its previous record flood in 1973. It crested at 49.4 on Aug. 1.