Thousands of acres of farmland in Missouri may flood.
According to Salon, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may flood 130,000 acres of farmland in Missouri by blowing up levees on the Mississippi River if summer storm cause too much rain. The Coast Guard have plans to halt if necessary.
“More than 70 years passed between the first and the last time the Army Corps had to detonate the Birds Point levee and activate the New Madrid floodway,” said Bruce Morrison, an attorney for the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center in St. Louis, to Salon. “Here we are just eight years later and the federal agencies again are confronting the prospect of having to blow the levee to lower flood levels. If we continue to restrict the River from its natural floodplain, the frequency with which the country needs to employ these emergency measures is only going to increase.”
Nearly a century ago after the Mississippi River flood of 1927, the Corps set aside 130,000 acres between Bird’s Point, Mo., and New Madrid. According to Salon, the floodway is just one of four on the river and is supposed to protect Cairo and 2.5 million acres of land in MIssouri, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.
According to Salon, the floodway was first used in 1937 by the Corps, and the last time the Corps used explosives to blow up levees for floodway purposes was May 2, 2011.
