Missouri takes levee battle to U.S. Supreme Court

CNN ^ | 05/01/2011 | Ashley Hayes

[Hawk720]

Missouri on Sunday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a plan to intentionally breach a levee on the rain-swollen Mississippi River, flooding Missouri farmland in an effort to save an Illinois town.

Earlier, Missouri filed a federal suit to block the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from following through on its plan to breach the Birds Point-New Madrid levee. A federal judge on Friday ruled against Missouri, saying a 1928 law permits the breach of the levee to ease pressure on the river.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster filed an application for an injunction to the high court on Sunday. It was assigned to Justice Samuel Alito, according to the U.S. Supreme Court's website.

The Corps of Engineers says the action is necessary to save the town of Cairo, Illinois, although it will flood rural Missouri farm communities. "I know that the price being paid is high," said Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh on Saturday.

"Demolition of the levee, however, will cause serious flooding across large portions of Mississippi County," Koster's office said in a statement Thursday, when the federal suit was filed.

Koster believes the 1928 law is unclear "as to whether the Corps of Engineers actually has authority to make the decision to detonate the levee," the statement said.

[Neoliberalnot]

And the MO side is 98% whitey. This is another opportunity to stick it to the white man. I am the barking obama and I approve this message.

[PAR35]

Google was my friend.

Applewhite Dam and Reservoir - voted down in 1991 and 1994 after $45 million was spent.

[trumandogz]

The Corps of Engineers has been known to build substandard levees ant it was the COE’s fault that the levees failed in New Orleans during Katrina.

[TxDas]

“The Corps of Engineers has been known to build substandard levees ant it was the COE’s fault that the levees failed in New Orleans during Katrina.”

In 1970, Senator Landreua’s father, Moon was voted in as mayor after Victor Schiro (spl) screwed up with Hurricane Camille. Camille did not hit NO either but Mayor Zero flooded the French Quarter because he was afraid of riots in the 9th ward. The black leaders told Zero if he flooded them again, as he had done during Betsyin’65, they would burn the city.

I swam from Canal Street to Jackson Square down Bourbon Street. Moon stole the moon the Feds gave NO to improve the levees and he put the biggest diesel powered pumps 35 ft below the river so they flooded when the Mississippi upstream flood waters broached the levee when it met the high tide backed up waters from the gulf, just like it did with Camille.

The COE has its problems but 100% of NO and LA problems are due to corrupt politicians. The whole state should be flooded and voted out of the USA.

I worked for the Model Cities Program in City Hall in 69 and was there and saw the corruption which is even worse now.

[Lion Den Dan]

It is an outrage to consider destroying all those productive agricultural Missouri acres (R) to save that cesspool known as Cairo, Ill (D). If there is anything in Cairo worth saving, give a prize to anyone who can show it.

[Talisker]

The place they want to blow the levee is in the center of the New Madrid fault. It's not that the explosives themselves could trigger an earthquake (I think...) but that it would release an enormous amount of very, very heavy water, which just might be enough to trigger a quake.

It's hard to think about that area of the country as being in earthquake danger, but it is. The last times the New Madrid went off, it changed the course of the MIssissippi River - and that was in the early, and then again late, 1800's when almost no one lived there (and certainly when there was no significant architectural buildup).

If it goes now, though, it would be... like... really bad, dude. From Wikipedia: In a report filed in November 2008, The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States," further predicting "widespread and catastrophic" damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and particularly Tennessee, where a 7.7 magnitude quake or greater would cause damage to tens of thousands of structures affecting water distribution, transportation systems, and other vital infrastructure.