01a.indd

April 22, 2012

REGION

Comic Con ’12

Good Times SUNDAY,

GTHOME Planting berry is not a shrubbery as difficult decision edthere are plenty good. ible and look

THERE f/8 AND BE brings Fred Lynch ville back Smelter t into the spotligh once again.

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DISCOVER

Comic book and gaming fans are filling the Osage Centre this weekend for Cape Comic Con 2012.

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NATURE

Mo. Department

of Conservation

APRIL 22,

2012 • SECTION

C

PULPIT FROM THE down GTFaith sat Miles, the with Brad arts new worship pastor at LaCroix Church.

Page 9C

file photo

is deeply of hunting ion Conservat because The rich tradition d with the intertwinent’s goals and mission ut our state Departme needed througho populas are hunting is a sustainable deer regulation to maintain lly, huntingresources are tion. Additiona ensure wildlife needed to depleted in Missouri. never again

Hunting andn Conservatio share rich Mo. tradition in

nt of Conservary this Departme The Missouri g its 75th anniversa our 75 years agoeffort to tion is celebratin it ironic that year. I find started by a citizen-led the deplerespond to agency was such tion of wildlife, d deer, as white-taile historic and on this the city ry anniversa is of Cape Girardeau what to do deciding now abun- . about it’s population dant deer tradition The rich is deeply of hunting with d AVIS intertwine ANDICE ion the Conservat because and mission state to nt’s goals t our . AdDepartme needed throughou population hunting is sustainable deer s are needed a maintain regulation never again , hunting are ditionally wildlife resources to ensure Missouri. and deer in depleted the 1940s and 1950s, major Through focus of MDC’s k were the A benchmarWerwild turkey n efforts. and wildlife restoratio Rudolf Bennitt only biologists in 1937 showed study by many other published state with ner Nagel gone. In left in the scarce or 1,800 deer seasons wildlife very species of closed deer hunting reopened in season the 1938, MDC The fall deer offers some of statewide. with about today Missouri the country 300,000 1959 and hunting in around best deer harvesting generates more 500,000 hunters activity . This activity deer annually of overall business more and supports than $1 billion each year in the state jobs. include efforts on than 11,000 conservati the natuToday, MDC’s and animals andIn addition plants on. all native that they depend of native ral systems turkey, a great variety efforts broader to deer and from these peregrine wildlife benefits bald eagles, barn owls, such as bluebirds, collared lizards, recently, and most falcons, eastern i ken turtles

C

D

FRED LYNCH

urian.com ~ flynch@semisso

with the memorial n, stands will be redediRevolutio . The plaque s of the American Cape Girardeau Daughter building in Chapter regent, se. the old federal Nancy Hunter the DAR in Sr. U.S. Courthou in 1924 by Sheila Holloway, was erected Hudson Limbaugh plaque that25 inside the Rush cated April

AU COUNTY’S

FOREFATHERS

CAPE GIRARDE REDEDICATING

and John Uriah Brock McLain, the was made, of Walker. the plaque At the time only locate the graves chapter could men. there was these eight here because “They cameSlinkard said. “They moved lots of land,” settlers that were American in 1924, West.” original dedication the names Since the has uncoveredburied in the chapter who are said of the Slinkard of other soldiers the unveiling example, and For area. at Old Bethel the each soldier several more unveiled there are plaque. ofmore in was originally in Jackson.

JONES The plaque lobby of the old post St. Cemetery well aware there are

BY ASHLEY MISSOURIAN the Broadway said.

“We are in 1924 in SOUTHEAST Slinkard stood at 339 the federal ,” members once Hunter county two the fice that ts also housed , there are d in y, the Nancy Currently that are descendan This building it was demolishewas On WednesdaDaughters of the the of the chapteroriginal eight soldiers: will honor court. However,federal building Chapter of the t of Alexplaque a new Revolution County’s of two of 1967 and the same site. The ,a American a descendan Girardeau where on of LaFern Stiver, and Lois Spaulding the lobby the erected on rededicati some of Cape placed in s with the names of eight Brock. ander McLain, was again until recently when forefather the in is t of Uriah ation featuring descendan to Stiver, McLain it remained Administr a plaque ary War soldiers buried has According Apple Creek Church General Services Now, the plaquein the Revolution the s. He enlisted Cape location buried in sold the building. the area. form what regent in PocahontaState Troops in to it’s third Cemetery been moved Rush Hudson Limbaugh “They helped chapter Carolina being is today,” “The time and in the North discharged after His lobby of the e.

Girardeau said. was in the two buildin 1780.

1777 and Federal Courthous in fighting Sheila Holloway has outlived He re-enlisted he emigrated what our they gave wounded.

“The plaque it’s third,” chapter show that before 1815. suffering ary War is part of said. is onto family records County ings and Slinkard Revolution is.” the Charlotte place to Cape Girardeau registrar soldiers listed on true history on will take Rush The eight er Hays, Robert in the The rededicati R, Page 7C Christoph y at 1:30 p.m. are Stephen FOREFATHE CourtSee plaque Wednesda Federal Ithamar Hubble, Brevard, will include Hudson Limbaugh Hill, Alexander ceremony LimRanney, Thomas house. The Judge Stephen N. of by remarks outlines of the history J

ter to hold Local DAR chap ceremony for rededication soldiers plaque War Revolutionary

A local DAR chapter prepares to hold a plaque rededication ceremony.

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SPORTS

All Missourian Find out which high school basketball players have made the All Missourian Team.

Page 1B

Perryville workers face theft charges

They knew it was coming.

They issued a warning.

Then the clouds opened up.

And history poured down.

THE THREE men allegedly stole and sold scrap wire from city projects

BY SHAY ALDERMAN

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN

Editor’s note: April 22, 2011, was the first day Southeast Missouri fell under a flood warning. What transpired in the following weeks marked one of the biggest flooding events of the past 100 years. This is the first in a series of stories about the flood of 2011.

BY SCOTT MOYERS

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN

W

hen Carlin Bennett first got the sense that they might do it, they might actually do it, he went

for a drive.

From Pinhook to Dorena, from Birds Point to Wolf Island, the newly elected Mississippi County presiding commissioner drove all across the massive floodway that in a matter of days would be, in spots, under 25 feet of water. Tractors and other farming equipment were being moved out.

Belongings were being loaded. Windows were being boarded up.

It was a thought that inspired Bennett’s drive. An obvious one, perhaps, but one that compelled him to go.

I have friends that live there.

These were his constituents, yes. But more than that. Bennett’s childhood home sat in the floodway.

Bennett was the son and grandson of farmers who worked the ground, just as generations upon generations of Mississippi County men had before them.

Bennett had gone to school with some of these folks. Attended church with them. Played sports with them.

And now, during his drive, Bennett stopped and talked to some of them.

“Whatever you’ve got, you need to get it out,” he told them. “They’re talking about activating this levee.

If they do, it’s going to be floods like you’ve never seen before.”

Even as he said it, Bennett found it hard to believe. It had been more than six decades since the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway had

‘I’ve seen what the worst is now.’

Photo galleries See photo galleries, view an interactive timeline and read coverage of the flood at semissourian.com/flood 2011.

TOP: A car sits trapped by floodwaters April 25 on County Road 249 after the driver of the vehicle was rescued by the Delta Fire Department.

been activated to alleviate floodwaters. That was the first time and it had never been done again. Until now, apparently.

Bennett himself with just a few months on the job. That time since November had been occupied largely dealing with a recount demand from his election opponent. In the first count, Bennett won by a scant seven votes. The second count padded that lead to 13. He was just settling into job when “this thing” happened.

A call from his emergency management director. Federal officials descending on his community. Scared residents. And eventually, on that wet night in May, explosives lighting up the night sky. The night everything changed.

All brought on by the Mississippi River, one that was their county’s namesake. But how do you blame a river?

“The river doesn’t have a mind or emotions,” Bennett said. “It just does what it has to do.”

After it was over, and it’s not truly over yet, what was left behind was much worse than Bennett expected.

“Anything that happens from now on will be much less than I expected,” he said. “Because I’ve seen what the worst is now.”

And it began with the rain.

■ To say no one expected significant flooding in April and May 2011 isn’t true. How could someone — a hydrologist, meteorologist, someone — not have seen it coming? It turned out to be among the largest and most damaging recorded flooding along the river in the past century. In April, two major storm systems dumped record levels of rainfall in the upper river watershed. An early snow melt pressed the Missouri and Mississippi rivers up. Heavy rainfall drenched Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

PERRYVILLE, Mo. — Three Perryville city workers were charged Friday with felony theft following a two-month probe into stolen city property that has resulted in the firing of at least four employees.

Warrants were issued Friday for the arrests of public works employees Charles S. LaRose, 54, Jeremy D. Meyer, 37, and Robert R. Brown, 34, all of Perryville.

Perry County Prosecuting Attorney Thomas Hoeh charged LaRose with two counts of felony theft for allegedly salvaging wiring from city projects and redeeming it in February and last May for approximately $6,700. Meyer and Brown were each charged with one count of felony theft for allegedly selling scrap wire in February valued at around $1,600.

According to probable-cause documents, LaRose said he sold about 600 feet of wire from Perryville Well No. 2 to Ace Scrap Metal Processors of St. Louis. The well had been damaged by lightning, requiring replacement of about 700 feet of wire.

See CHARGES, Page 15A

Docs To see the probable-cause statement, look for this story at semissourian. com.

Southeast officials: No form of hazing is acceptable THE APRIL 13 incident involving the football team would be the 11th hazing incident in six years

BY ERIN RAGAN

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN Hazing in any form won’t be tolerated at Southeast Missouri State University, officials said Friday, one week after an incident involving members of the Redhawks football team. The team members allegedly duct-taped the hands, feet and mouths of several players and carried them from a

See FLOOD, Page 14A See HAZING, Page 15A

WEB: semissourian.com Flood coverage

WEATHER:

Prom photos

A year ago Southeast Missouri started battling one of the worst floods in its history. Browse photos, read stories and watch video from a year ago at semissourian.com/flood2011.

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Volume 108 • Issue 172

H:62 L: 48 Partly sunny

14A

FROM PAGE ONE

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Flood

From Page 1A and western Kentucky.

Cape Girardeau saw the wettest spring in recorded history, as well. From March to May, nearly 32 inches of rainfall fell here — 68 percent of what normally falls in a whole year. The sun seemed to disappear for days, even weeks, at a time.

Mary Lamm and Bob Holmes were watching.

Lamm is a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky. Holmes is the U.S. Geological Survey’s national flood hazard coordinator. Both knew 2011 was going to produce troubling floods, though after the waters fell they acknowledged they didn’t even suspect how right they would turn out to be.

Holmes works in Rolla, Mo., but he has roots in Southern Illinois, growing up in Harrisburg, Ill. He still remembers his grandparents talking about the flood of 1937 — the one where the Birds Point levees were first activated — and how devastating they were.

Holmes began looking at flood outlooks for 2011 in November the year before.

He saw snow piling up in the plains and he knew when it melted, it would create a significant chance of flooding.

“It’s one thing to say we have a chance of flooding,” he said. “It’s another to see what we got.”

Torrential rains fell. And fell. It didn’t rain everywhere every day. But in 2011, according to the weather service, some part of Southeast

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

Rain begins to fall April 25 as Chaffee, Mo., residents sandbag around a house just off State Highway EE as rising floodwaters close in on the house. The residents of the house said they were “trying to stick it out.”

Missouri — from Perryville to Cooter — saw some measure of rain from April 1 until May 2, the day of the Birds Point levee breach.

Some days saw as much as 5 inches fall. That caused the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and their tributaries to begin to swell to record levels by the beginning of May. From April 14 to 16, the storm system that spawned one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history also produced large amounts of rainfall across the southern and Midwestern parts of the country.

By late April, residents in Delta, Chaffee, Gordonville and Whitewater were sandbagging to keep water out of their homes. At about the same time, emergency workers in Poplar Bluff were hop-

ing the levee holding back the Black River would survive yet another downpour.

“We knew we were going to be in trouble,” Lamm said.

“But we didn’t know how much. You don’t expect to see the corps blow the levee.

You don’t expect to see whole towns give up a floodfight because they’re not winning.

So did we expect flooding?

Yes. Did what happen surpass what we expected? Absolutely.”

And still the rains fell.

■ As the waters rose near the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, which is cradled by the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, Clay Shelby was becoming increasingly nervous.

“Scared to death,” he said nearly a year later. “Still am.”

And as the waters rose, Shelby was watching the weather reports with growing fear. He even brushed up on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operational plan of activation. If they activated it, which requires using explosives to blow a large hole in the levee, it would send massive amounts of water across the 800 acres he has farmed in the floodway for 35 years.

Like many other farmers who owned, managed or worked in farms in the 130,000-acre floodway, Shelby had a lot to lose. He has a family that rely on him to provide. Not only that, there’s the farm employees and their families to think about. Not to mention the agricultural businesses situated outside the floodway that count on

Editor: Spencer Cramer / 388-3632

business from the floodway farmers.

“Money turns around in the community,” Shelby said.

“This is half the county. If we were to lose production for a year? We’re already not doing that well. That would have been a big hit.”

As the calendar prepared to be flipped from April to May, Shelby had also noticed his neighbors becoming more anxious.

“There was a lot of angst,” he said. “There’s just so much politics involved in anything like this. It’s still ongoing.”

They worried about what such a massive flood would do. How much silt damage would there be? Ditches would be clogged, no doubt.

The roads would likely be maimed. Many felt helpless.

A running narrative among floodway farmers in April 2011, one that exists today, was that the corps was going to blow the levee just to see how it worked. They whisper even today that that’s why it was done at night, under cover of darkness, so that fewer people would know it was happening.

Shelby didn’t subscribe to that theory. Not even then.

“They have a plan and they were going to follow that plan,” Shelby said. “They told us that they had orders and they were going to carry out those orders unless they got different ones.”

So, in the days before the breach, Shelby watched the skies, scanned the weather reports and worried.

And still the rains fell.

■ Bennett held out hope that the corps would not have to do it. He knew some in

Mississippi County thought if the rain stopped there, they’d be OK. Bennett knew that wasn’t true. He was watching weather reports near the Ohio Valley and into Tennessee and Alabama. He knew if it was raining in Indianapolis. All of that water eventually made its way into either the Mississippi or the Ohio, which brought it right to their doorstep.

“Having a nice pretty day here in Mississippi County didn’t really matter,” he said.

“It was the perfect storm. It really was.”

If they did it, Bennett worried what it would do to his community as a whole. He pointed to the front page of one of the two local newspapers he owns. It was from the 1950 flood. The floodway wasn’t activated by the corps.

No explosives were used. But the floodway was flooded nonetheless.

The headline reads, “Spillway evacuated,” and the article goes on to say that 770 families that contained 2,370 people moved out. That’s how many people used to live in the floodway. Not all returned. In April 2011, about 50 families lived in the floodway.

“These series of floods have gradually driven people away,” Bennett said.

If the corps blows the levee, what would that do? How many would come back, if any? Bennett wondered.

In the meantime, he was watching the weather reports. Trying to calm his friends and neighbors. And waiting.

And still the rains fell. smoyers@semissourian.com 388-3642

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 NATION

Primary wins

SPORTS

Victory for Jackson

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney captured wins in several states’ primaries Tuesday.

Page 5A

Jackson’s baseball team beat Perryville 10-0 in five innings Tuesday.

Page 1B

County backs away from buying former federal building for now

Poseidon was winning the battle.

The rivers had taken the reins.

Mortals pleaded for government’s mercy.

But heartbreak spilled over.

DOCUMENTS SHOW the county had made offers of more than $1 million in the past

BY SCOTT MOYERS

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN The Cape Girardeau County Commission has officially ended negotiations that never really got started with the new owner of the former federal building on Broadway. Meanwhile, the federal government agency that unloaded it has admitted to major missteps in the way the sale was handled.

The commission voted unanimously Thursday to “cut off all negotiations at this time due to the lack of response from the current owner,” according to

minutes from the closedsession meeting that were provided to the Southeast Missourian in response to a Sunshine Law request.

But the 150 pages in closed meeting minutes that dates back to 2009 also tells the story of the county’s frequent attempts over the years to buy the building, with offers that ranged from $1 to $1.2 million and that, in fact, a deal was in place at one point for the county to own it. But those all fell through, only to have the agency ultimately sell the building in February to someone else for $325,015.

The documents also helped shed light on Presiding Commissioner Clint Tracy’s calculated gamble to stop bidding during a See BUILDING, Page 11A

Docs Read minutes from closed sessions of Cape Girardeau County Commission meetings at semissourian.com.

DAVID CARSON ~ St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The entire system was at risk.

There were eminent failures.”

An explosion lights up the May 2 night sky as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blows an 11,000-foot hole in the Birds Point levee in Mississippi County, Mo.

BY MELISSA MILLER

On this day, April 25

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN

Cape river level: 40.3 feet Cape flood stage: 32 feet Cairo river level: 54.6 feet Cairo flood stage: 40 feet Rainfall: 4.69 inches

Reservoirs were full, the rivers kept swelling and the rain kept coming. The Ohio River set a record of 61.1 feet on the Cairo, Ill., gauge. It was still climbing.

Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh, president of the Mississippi River Commission, had a decision to make on May 1, 2011.

Under the Flood Control Act of 1928, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had the authority to intentionally breach the Birds Point levee and relieve pressure from the rising waters. His decision to act on this authority May 2 flooded 130,000 acres of farmland — home to about 50 families in Mississippi and

Several more roads in Cape Girardeau, Bollinger, Perry and Scott counties were closed due to flooding. The American Red Cross opened a shelter for flood victims. Gov. Jay Nixon activated the Missouri National Guard and promised he would do everything in his power to keep the corps from blowing the Birds Point levee. The corps announced that officials will meet tomorrow on whether to blow the levee.

For a complete timeline of the Flood of 2011 or to see the photos from last year, go to semissourian.com/flood2011.

Photo gallery See photo galleries, view an interactive timeline and read coverage of the flood at semissourian. com/flood2011.

New Madrid counties.

It’s a decision, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that prevented more than $112 billion in damages throughout the Mississippi River and Tributaries system.

But the farmers, whose livelihood depends on the floodway, are still counting what Walsh’s decision cost them. The Food and Agriculture Research Policy Institute estimates the crop losses alone at $85 million and a broader economic impact

exceeding $156 million.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson contends the corps wasn’t working off proper maps of the floodway and based its decision on incorrect hydrology.

A levee break in an unexpected area could have easily caused $1 billion in damage, said Robert Anderson, corps spokesman in Vicksburg, Miss.

“The entire system was at risk,” Anderson said.

“There were eminent failures. All along the system people were really at the point where the levees were about to be either overtopped or the pressure from the historic heights was just going to create a failure in an area that is not scheduled to fail.”

See FLOOD, Page 11A

Weapons charges dropped in Nov. concealed gun case THE SUSPECT had maintained that he had only been trying to protect himself

BY SCOTT MOYERS

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN Calling it the “appropriate thing to do” in light of the evidence, prosecutors Tuesday dismissed a weapons charge against a Jackson man who stood accused of wielding a gun during a heated argument at a Cape Girardeau gas station last November.

James H. “Junior” Swift was in court Tuesday awaiting a judge’s decision about whether he would stand

trial for unlawful use of a weapon when word came down that the charges had been dropped. Swift, who is licensed to carry a concealed weapon, had maintained that he had only been trying to protect himself when he reached into his car and put his gun in his waistband following an argument about moving his car at Kidd’s on Broadway.

At issue was whether Swift deliberately displayed the weapon in an angry or threatening manner, a legal prerequisite for the charge.

Cape Girardeau County assistant prosecutor Jack Koester began to have doubts about the charges See CHARGES, Page 11A

Cape Girardeau Junior High School officials seeing an increase in number of mice

BY ERIN RAGAN

try to ward them off,” said Neil Glass, the Cape Girardeau School District’s administrative services director in charge of facilities.

School administrators said they aren’t sure exactly why there seems to be an increased number of mice running about the school this year,

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN Cape Girardeau Junior High School students are reporting they’ve had some unwelcome guests recently.

“We’re doing the best we can to

but they are trying to take care of the problem.

One factor may be that portions of the school are more open to the elements because of ongoing construction of a library addition on the school’s east side, Glass said.

Mice sometimes get into other

buildings in the district in addition to the junior high, but that school seems to see the problem more frequently, he said, especially when the weather turns cold. The addition is scheduled to be completed in July.

“We can hit it a little harder after

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See MICE, Page 8A

WEATHER:

Prom photos

We’ve posted a new gallery of mystery photos at semissourian.com/history.

Check the photos to see if you can ID them.

construction and make sure they are gone,” he said.

For now, the district has contracted with a local pest control company to get rid of the mice using glue traps, and students have been

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Volume 108 • Issue 174

H:75 L: 63

Partly sunny and warm

FROM PAGE ONE

Flood From Page 1A An unplanned breach could have destroyed hundreds of homes, lives and cut off major transportation arteries, Anderson said.

The fact that the floodway plan had been in place for years didn’t reduce the panic expressed during a town-hall meeting organized

by Emerson on April 27 in East Prairie, Mo. In the coming days, multiple times a day, Walsh and members of the Mississippi River Commission received updates on the capacity of Kentucky and Barkley lakes to hold back water, the condition of the levees, and the National Weather Service’s latest forecasts.

Walsh waited as long as possible, longer than many of his colleagues thought he should have, to give the order to pump a slurry of explosives into pipes embedded in the Birds Point levee, according to a book the corps commissioned titled

Building From Page 1A

second online auction with hopes of buying the building from its new owner, RDRH Holdings of Austin, Texas.

Tracy has been designated by his fellow commissioners to act as the negotiator and was authorized to bid up to $750,000, but stopped bidding at $300,000.

But Tracy’s plan fell apart when company president Majid Hemmasi failed to return frequent phone calls from Tracy in the weeks after the sale was finalized, prompting the commission to end negotiations that essentially never happened.

“In hindsight, it is what it is,” Tracy said. “You can’t change it. ... You can criticize my decision to stop bidding at $300,000 but, at the end of the day, we didn’t spend any taxpayer money on the building. It was done in the spirit of trying to be fiscally responsible and I’m willing to defend that argument that we’re trying to be as frugal as we can.”

Meanwhile, the GSA has also admitted that the way the Cape Girardeau building was sold was not well handled. The GSA is under national scrutiny for the $832,000 it spent for a lavish training session near Las Vegas that featured a mind reader, bicycle giveaways and after-hour receptions in resort suites for federal workers.

According to transcripts, U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, grilled former GSA chief Martha Johnson on March 27 during a House committee hearing just days before Johnson resigned. Emerson took the opportunity to ask Johnson specifically about the way the federal building situation in Cape Girardeau was handled.

“We have made some mistakes in the disposal of the Cape Girardeau courthouse,” Johnson told Emerson. “We

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

“Divine Providence — History of the 2011 Flood” by Charles A. Camillo.

“Making this decision is not easy or hard,” Walsh said. “It’s simply grave — because the decision leads to loss of property and livelihood, either in a floodway or in an area that was not designed to flood.”

The operation, which cost about $2 million, was plagued with problems. The water was so high, just a foot or two below the top of the levee in places, that it made it difficult for crews to access. There was also lightning at the time. Then explosives ran short, forcing the corps to reduce the size of the first breach by 2,000 feet. When more explosives had to be obtained for the second breach site, these proved less effective, making a smaller hole in the levee than planned.

Engineers and planners are now working closely with the staff at the corps’ Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg to incorporate the lessons learned from last year’s operation of the

floodway into future plans, said Jim Pogue, spokesman for the Memphis District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“This includes but is certainly not limited to the blasting agent we used and possible alternative blasting agents, and pipeline configuration,” he said. “Our goal is to ensure we take full advantage of everything we learned last year so that any future floodway operation is done in the most efficient manner possible while providing the highest level of protection to the people of the region.”

The corps is also working on a comprehensive report on its flood fighting efforts last year due out this August, Anderson said.

When asked if the breach at Birds Point could change the way the river is managed in the future, Anderson said it very well could.

The corps is looking at raising the levee in some areas, examining why the sand boils were so severe, and if there is a need for another floodway between Memphis and Vicksburg, he

said.

This is the first time in history all three floodways in the Mississippi Rivers and Tributaries system were activated in the same flood event.

The last time the Birds Point levee was breached was in 1937 and since that time the floodway plan has been subject to scrutiny.

In 1987, the late congressman Bill Emerson pushed for a resolution to direct the corps to determine feasible alternatives to operating the floodway. As a result, a 1990 study looked at purchasing the land within the floodway, constructing permanent auxiliary channels in the floodway to confine floodwaters, realigning and setting back the front line levee at five locations to provide a wider floodplain and a plan of natural overtopping of the front-line levee. In the end, the study concluded that while several alternatives were feasible from an engineering standpoint, they were not justified economically.

In 1997, when the Cairo gauge reached 56 feet, the

have certainly — what is the expression? — eaten some crow.”

Later in the hearing, Robert A. Peck, who was then the GSA’s public buildings commissioner, also weighed in under direct questioning from Emerson. Peck also has since been fired from his post in light of the scandal.

Peck told Emerson that the initial decision about whether to conclude a sale with the county was made before the current GSA regional administrator in Springfield, Mo., was hired.

“So when we started down the path, it became awfully convoluted and it did not end in a good result,” Peck said.

“It was done before he got there and I will tell you this: This is a case study which we are spreading around the GSA to talk about how not to make certain decisions about our property disposals.”

Emerson, a frequent GSA critic, offered her thoughts about the way the GSA handled the sale again Tuesday. As chairwoman of the House subcommittee on financial services and general government, Emerson cut $1.6 billion last year from the president’s budget request for the GSA. The way the county was treated “was an outrage,” Emerson said. “It was an outrage from the beginning to the end. ... It was just one mishap after another and it was quite inexcusable. The whole process was flawed from beginning to end.”

The county has been interested in buying the former federal building since 2005 after it was learned a new federal courthouse was to be built. The county has intentions of building a new consolidated courthouse in Jackson. Buying the former federal building in Cape Girardeau was to serve as a stopgap measure to relocate certain county offices from the outdated Common Pleas Courthouse.

After the federal building went up for sale, the GSA and

the county actually reached an agreement that would allow the county to buy it for $1.27 million. But then a lawsuit was filed by the Rev. Larry Rice, who wanted to convert the building into a homeless shelter. That stalled the plan until the courts ruled Rice couldn’t have it.

In the meantime, county officials came to believe that the building wasn’t worth that much, one factor being that they would likely have to sink $1 million to upgrade the building. The county lowered its price to about $900,000 at that point, but the economy had soured and commissioners weren’t sure that was a reliable market value.

They then entered a partnership with Cape Girardeau officials to buy the building and share space and the building could serve as a future city hall once the county vacated the building to move into the new courthouse. But closed-session minutes from a meeting last year show that the city became frustrated about how the space would be divided and they eventually dropped out of the partnership.

The county then made an offer of $300,000, Tracy said, arguing that taxpayers already paid to have the building built and shouldn’t get gouged by essentially paying for it twice. Using that same logic, Tracy even tried to ask the GSA to get Congressional approval to sell the building for $1, which made sense to him he said because it would be transferring a government property from one government agency to another.

The county then made an offer of $750,000, an amount that Tracy’s instinct told him was too high. The GSA responded that it didn’t think the county was taking the negotiations seriously enough. So the GSA took the sale to online auction. The county offered more than $450,000 during that first auction, which made it the

third-highest bidder. Even after the top bidders backed out, the GSA asked the commissioners to up their offer to $750,000, which Tracy was reluctant to do now that he felt the market had dictated the selling price.

The GSA took the issue back to auction a second time and Tracy stopped bidding at $300,000. He believed the county’s incrementally higher bids were artificially increasing the perceived value of the building. He also had previously received a call from the president of the company in Texas that eventually bought the building and Tracy hoped he could buy the building from him. If the county continued to bid, that would continue to drive up the price, Tracy said. The GSA’s track record, Tracy said, didn’t leave him optimistic that the county would ever be able to buy the building for a fair price from the federal government.

Tracy said that since the GSA had rejected so many of their previous offers that were higher, he never thought the agency would let it go for $325,000. But it did.

Now, the commission is planning to move forward, hopeful that perhaps RDRH Holdings will contact the county. But if the company doesn’t, the commission will figure something else out, Tracy said.

“I probably wouldn’t have approached the negotiations like that,” Commissioner Jay Purcell said of Tracy’s decision to stop bidding during the second online auction. “But I’m not going to Monday morning quarterback Clint’s decision. ... So we’ll wait and see. I’m disappointed about it. I think we should have gotten it. It just didn’t work out that way.”

The GSA declined to comment Tuesday on the issue and calls to RDRH Holdings company president Majid Hemmasi went unreturned. smoyers@semissourian.com 388-3642

Mississippi River commission considered operating the floodway and went as far as loading barges with materials and equipment.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, Sen. Claire McCaskill and Sen Roy Blunt all say making sure the Birds Point levee is restored to its preflood height of 62.5 feet is a top priority. The corps has already spent $25 million on a temporary levee in place now at 55 feet, Anderson said. The entire Mississippi River and Tributaries system sustained more than $2 billion in damages from last year’s flood.

Emerson has inserted language into the House Fiscal Year 2013 Energy and Water Appropriations bill requiring that these repairs be made by Dec. 31.

When it comes to future river management, Emerson said the local residents need to be part of the discussion.

“We have a lot of local stakeholders who know the lay of the land better than anybody else because they live and make their livelihood on it,” she said. “The

Charges From Page 1A after last month’s preliminary hearing, when even the judge called the decision to bind Swift over for trial a “close call” and took 30 days to review the matter.

A preliminary hearing only requires probable cause to send a case to a jury and that’s a much lower standard than proof beyond reasonable doubt, Koester said. It became apparent, Koester said, that the chances of a successful conviction had become “extremely remote.”

“I felt that attempting to proceed with the case any further would not be an appropriate use of judicial resources,” Koester said.

“After reviewing the testimony at the preliminary hearing and the reports that were in our possession, I thought that [dismissing the case] was the appropriate thing to do.”

Swift’s lawyer, Allen Moss, said that the prosecution’s decision was a good one.

“This is a victory for Second Amendment rights,” Moss said. “It’s a victory for those that support the conceal-carry law. This gentleman put his freedom and his reputation and everything on the line to stand up for his rights and we think that’s admirable.”

It is also important to note, Moss said, that Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle has been a vocal opponent to the state’s conceal-carry law, which makes it legal to carry and travel with a concealed handgun. Moss said he believes Swingle’s definition of conceal-carry is narrow and that he can’t help but think Swingle’s mentality on the subject had something to do with how he

locals really need to be part of the solution.”

Changing the way the activation of the floodway happens is not a matter of legislation, she said. It’s the Mississippi River Commission’s rule-making process that determined explosives should be used, not statute.

“It is very hard to get the corps of engineers to be what I consider forward thinking,” Emerson said.

“A better way of looking at it would be to have two or three alternatives to look at the precise moment when you have to make a decision,” she said.

Emerson believes there are other ways to activate the floodway instead of using explosives.

Her preferred alternative would be to allow natural overtopping, which did occur in some places along the levee earlier in the day May 2. The corps didn’t detonate the levee until later that night.

“I think they jumped the gun,” she said. mmiller@semissourian.com 388-3646

proceeded with the case.

But Koester said Tuesday that he filed the charges and he was the one who decided to drop them. Koester also voiced his opinion that both sides of the dispute could have handled the situation differently.

“You had two adults screaming obscenities at each other over something as insignificant as a parking space,” Koester said.

“Whenever you bring a gun into a situation like that, it can have tragic consequences. I’m just glad nobody was hurt in this situation and I hope both sides learned a lesson — that sometimes it’s better to let cooler heads prevail.”

At the preliminary hearing March 27, Patricia Cox testified that Swift reached into his car for his gun and tucked it into his waistband in an attempt to threaten her after the two had been in an argument that began when Cox asked Swift to move his car from the gas pumps so she could fuel up.

“He made sure I saw it,” Cox told the judge. “To me, my life was in jeopardy.”

But Cox also testified that Swift never pointed the gun at her, never waived it around and never told her he intended to use it.

Swift has said that he got his gun out only after Cox called some friends on the phone to come to the gas station.

A probable-cause statement alleges that Cox at one point spat on Swift.

Koester said he never considered filing charges against her and noted that Cox has repeatedly denied it. Attempts to reach Cox were unsuccessful.

After Swift heard that the charges had been dropped, he expressed relief, but not regret.

“I just wanted to protect myself,” Swift said. smoyers@semissourian.com 388-3642

Friends plan new search for Jacque Waller SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN Friends of Jacque Waller are planning another search in May for the still-missing mother of three from Jackson.

A first-degree murder charge was filed Monday against her estranged husband, Clay Waller. Jacque Waller was last seen June 1.

Search leader Bobby Sherrill said Tuesday the search will cover more than 100 acres in four areas of Cape Girardeau County on May 5. The search is law enforcement directed and no other organizational arrangements have yet been made.

SPEAK YOUR MIND. TAKE PART IN OUR ONLINE POLLS AND FORUMS. www.sem issouria n . c om

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Editor: Spencer Cramer / 388-3632

11A

Thursday, April 26, 2012 STATE

Postal issues

A Senate bill would help the Postal Service avoid bankruptcy using an $11 billion infusion.

Page 4A

BUSINESS

SPORTS

Burger King announced Wednesday that all of its eggs and pork will come from cage-free chickens and pigs by 2017.

Page 8A

St. Vincent’s girls soccer team beat Jackson’s 2-1 on Wednesday.

Cage-free food Close contest

Tracy to meet with new federal building owner RDRH HOLDINGS says the company’s goal is to find a tenant for the building

BY SCOTT MOYERS

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN Contact was finally made between Cape Girardeau County Presiding Commissioner Clint Tracy and the federal building’s new owner Wednesday, with both sides agreeing to a sit-down within the next two weeks, when the developer from Austin, Texas, intends to be in town.

The news comes nearly a week after the Cape Girardeau County Commission voted to walk away — at least temporarily — from an attempted negotiation to buy the building, citing an inability to get a return phone call from the owner, Majid Hemmasi of RDRH Holdings Inc. The two chatted only briefly after Hemmasi called Tracy late in the afternoon to let Tracy know he wasn’t willfully ignoring him. The Southeast Missourian initially made contact with Hemmasi earlier in the day to find out why he wasn’t giving Tracy a return call.

Initially, Hemmasi said that he had not received a phone call from Tracy since

Hemmasi outbid the county to buy the building from the General Services Administration at online auction for $325,015. Later in the day, Hemmasi recanted a bit after talking with Tracy, saying that it was possible that he simply hadn’t received Tracy’s messages.

Hemmasi intended to fly to Cape Girardeau sooner, he said, but noted that he has been struggling with back problems. But he will be here within the next two weeks, he said, when he intends to look the building over and meet with brokers and the county commission.

“Our goal is to find a tenant,” Hemmasi said. “I’m glad to meet with the county.

If they want to buy the building we could work something out. If not, we’ll see if lawyers want to rent it out or somebody else. It’s nothing personal. We just want to come in and clean it up and keep it going. We want to be a part of downtown.

We want to work things out so it’s the best thing for everyone.”

Hemmasi also agreed that he would sell to a government agency at a lower price than someone from the private sector, something he said the day after See BUILDING, Page 8A

Docs Read the minutes from the county commission’s closed sessions at semissourian.com.

Missouri senators vote to stay out of Medicaid dispute THE BUDGET would have required the state to contract with all companies that met the state’s bidding criteria

BY DAVID A. LIEB

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri senators on Wednesday rebuffed a legislative attempt to intervene in a dispute over Missouri’s $1.1 billion Medicaid managed care program after some lawmakers contended it would be inappropriate for them to meddle in state contracting decisions.

Under an administrative

policy change, the state decided to limit the number of insurers getting Medicaid managed care contracts this year to three companies.

In the past, the state had allowed any firm that met the bidding criteria to compete to cover a portion of the roughly 430,000 Medicaid recipients included in the managed care pool.

One of the losing bidders, Molina Healthcare Inc., sued the state seeking to invalidate the contracts. It took particular issue with the new limit on participating insurers and argued that 80,000 Medicaid recipients it currently covers would be harmed if they had to pick a See SENATE, Page 8A

Page 1B

Sixty wasn’t just a number.

It was oxygen to the drowning masses.

You gotta save the four-lane.

Dammed if you do ...

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

Dave Phillips adds floorboard from his uncle’s house on Boone Street in Morehouse, Mo., to the pile of furniture and household items in the front yard May 11.

On this day, April 26 Cape river level: 42.3 feet Cape flood stage: 32 feet Cairo river level: 56.53 feet Cairo flood stage: 40 feet Rainfall: 1.93 inches The corps delayed the decision to intentionally breach Birds Point. “I don’t want anybody blowing up any levees in my state,” Gov. Jay Nixon announced. Cairo, Ill.’s mayor asked for voluntary evacuation of the city. A shelter for pets was opened in Arena Park. Meanwhile, another 2 inches of rain was expected.

For a complete timeline of the Flood of 2011 or to see the photos from last year, go to semissourian.com/flood2011.

“They could have told us,‘we’re fixing to dam your community’”

BY ERIN RAGAN

Photo gallery

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN MOREHOUSE, Mo. — Ed Stinnett kept a close eye on the red marks he and other Morehouse residents spray-painted on buildings in late April last year. During the afternoon and into the late evening of April 27, they checked them every hour. They knew more water was coming, and they might have to get going. They might have to leave their homes and businesses behind, at least for a few days.

A few blocks to the south, the highway began to disappear. Mark Shelton, district engineer for the Missouri Department of Trans-

See photo galleries, view an interactive timeline and read coverage of the flood at semissourian. com/flood2011. portation’s southeast region, watched traffic back up as reluctant drivers slowly entered lanes covered in cold, muddy water.

Shortly before 5 p.m., Shelton made what he now calls an “in-thefield, spur-of-the-moment decision.”

He ordered MoDOT crews to build a berm along U.S. 60 to keep the road open. Major highways and secondary roads throughout

BY JOE GAMM

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN Prosecutors have filed perjury charges against a 45-year-old Cape Girardeau man for failing to disclose he was allegedly biased against police when he was chosen as a juror in a felony drug trial, court records show.

A preliminary hearing for Verdist

Poindexter is scheduled for 1 p.m.

Wednesday in Jackson.

Poindexter was chosen as a juror in the January trial for Charles Anthony Robinson, who was accused of trafficking crack cocaine, court records show. Jurors were out for less than half an hour at the conclusion of the case before the trial ended because of a hung jury, Robinson’s attorney

Steve Wilson said.

During jury selection, potential jurors were asked while under oath to raise their hands if they had issues with police officers, such as not trusting them, the probable-cause statement said.

“Verdist Poindexter, who was in the See PERJURY, Page 5A

Business, 8A

WEATHER:

Legislative blog

Read past coverage, browse photos and view video related to Jacque Waller’s disappearance at semissourian.com/wallercase.

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Daily Record, 7A Dear Abby, 12A Entertainment, 12A

Social media ■ Facebook: facebook.com/semissourian

State Rep. Donna Lichtenegger has started a blog to keep constituents informed about what’s happening in the Capitol.

Read it at semissourian. com/blogs.

Classified, 5B Comics, 4B Crossword, 4B

See FLOOD, Page 5A

Juror charged with perjury in Cape drug case

WEB: semissourian.com Waller case

Southeast Missouri were already shut down or closing due to days of relentless rain. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were talking about flooding a 130,000-acre spillway the next county over. MoDOT knew, Shelton said, this amount of rain, this flooding, was a series of events that was unprecedented.

Many in Morehouse already had water slowly approaching their doorsteps when they turned in for the night. But they awoke the next morning to several inches in their homes and say MoDOT’s berm is to blame. Several property owners filed suit against the Missouri

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Movie times, 12A Obituaries, 7A Opinion, 6A

Speak Out, 6A Sports, 1B TV listings, 12A

Volume 108 • Issue 175

H:80 L: 53 Thundershower

FROM PAGE ONE

Flood

From Page 1A Transportation and Highways Commission in October, alleging when workers built the berm “under the cover of darkness” that they “caused water to flow violently and quickly into the town of Morehouse,” which caused extensive damage to many buildings, mainly homes.

“At the time, we didn’t realize what was going on, through all the rain and levee breaches,” Shelton said. He couldn’t imagine the possible effect on the region’s drainage system and roads if the corps blew the levee, if there was more rain or if other smaller levees gave way. U.S. 60 had to be kept open, he said.

Shelton said he consulted with no other state officials or employees when he made the call to build the berm.

“We were just in the fight the battle mode. That’s what happened,” he said.

Morehouse Mayor Pete Leija said city officials and residents weren’t notified at all that the highway department was building the berm.

Many residents, especially in the south and southwest sections of town where flooding was worst, were angry with him, he said. But he didn’t know any better than they what was coming, he said. He understood the need at the time to keep the road open, he said, but MoDOT’s actions just weren’t fair.

“They could have told us,‘we’re fixing to dam your community,’” he said. “‘Tell your people.’”

Stinnett is asking for $25,000 in the suit against the state after his home sustained damage the morning after the berm was built. If the suit eventually settles in his favor, most of his share will go to FEMA, and to attorneys, he said. FEMA paid many of the town’s residents within weeks of damage surveys conducted after the flood. Recipients of suit funds would have to pay back the government for recovery assistance. Stinnett said that is OK with him.

“I hope I don’t get anything out of it except to put MoDOT in their place,” he said.

John W. Koenig Jr., attorney for the highway commission, said MoDOT is claiming no responsibility for flooding damage, and taking action to keep the highway open was actually a “heroic act” by the department.

Koenig said review of aerial footage taken by the National Guard at the time of the flood shows the damage to homes was already done by the time the berm was built.

“You can’t drown something that is already drowned,” he said.

Koenig said action in the suit is pending because he is waiting for the plaintiffs to re-

Perjury From Page 1A pool, did not raise his hands nor did he say anything,” the statement said.

“While Steve Wilson was questioning the jurors, he asked the jury pool if anyone wanted to be on the jury.

Poindexter raised his hand and said he wanted to be on the jury. Mr. Wilson asked Mr. Poindexter if he was sure and Poindexter replied that he was sure,” the statement said.

During jury deliberations at the end of the trial, Poindexter told other jurors “that he did not trust the police, especially the ‘Cape cops’

Docs Read the property owners’ lawsuit at semissourian.com. spond to a request asking for legal descriptions of properties. The properties allegedly damaged by MoDOT’s actions weren’t properly identified in the original petition filed in New Madrid County, he said.

Those descriptions will need to be matched with aerial footage for the case to continue, he said.

‘May never recover’ Leija said he doesn’t know a total dollar cost for the town related to the flooding, but because of residents who abandoned their damaged homes, revenue was lost and that will continue. Leija’s office, now in the former Morehouse Elementary School, contains a city map with areas marked in green, yellow and pink.

Pink represents the 100 or so properties condemned from flood damage. Around 75 have since been torn down. The remaining are only so because the city has been unable to reach the owners or need permission from more than one owner of a property to give the go-ahead. Demolishing the ruins the flood left behind will now be at property owners’ expense since the deadline has passed for federal assistance, Leija said.

Morehouse Elementary, which was under the supervision of the Sikeston School District, closed indefinitely last June to save the district money. School board member Scott Crumpecker said the primary reason to close the school was related to financials, and that the school didn’t flood last April. But he still believes the decision to close the school was related, since it came at a time when the future of Morehouse was largely unknown.

“Some of this will be something the community may never recover from,” he said.

Crumpecker himself owns a farm that extends into the city limits of Morehouse. His land and home also sustained damage, but he has not yet decided whether he’ll join others in seeking reparations.

For now he is working his own investigation into what caused the waters to rise quickly overnight.

“There are people in Morehouse that I have no doubt have suffered because of the negligence of MoDOT,” he said. “But I am not sure my flooding in particular was because of the berm.”

Stinnett said he’s sure his was. He lives on the corner of Locust and Levy streets, in an area where most homes took on water in the early morning hours of April 28. He said that between 2 and 8 p.m. April 27, the water levels on buildings in several areas of town marked by spraypaint rose around three inches, but then stopped. A last check of water and that he would vote ‘not guilty’ no matter what,” the statement said.

The statement said Poindexter had made up his mind about how he would find in the case before the trial started. It said other jurors demanded Poindexter explain why he volunteered to be on the jury and why he did not tell lawyers and the judge that he was biased against police.

The 11 other jurors told the judge about the deadlock and the judge declared a mistrial. The case is scheduled to be re-tried in June.

Prosecutors filed the perjury charges against Poindexter in February.

“As best I can tell, they’re charging him on perjury by omission,” said Pat McMena-

at 2:30 a.m. showed no change, he said.

His home still had no water when he got up around 6 a.m. the next day and headed to the coffee shop, as he did most mornings. That changed quickly over the next few hours, he said. By 7 a.m., he was receiving reports of water rising in his yard from friends and neighbors. His garage was flooded by midmorning and the water rose over a foot a short time later, leaving two inches standing throughout his home. Not knowing how much more was coming, he said he told his wife they should “just get some clothes and get out of here.”

A few streets to the east, Kenny McWilliams’ yard contained ankle-deep water the night MoDOT built the berm. When he awoke at 7 a.m. the next morning, it was in his living room, he said.

Like Stinnett, he lost all his furniture and appliances and had to replace the floors and walls. He hasn’t, however, joined the suit. He said he is satisfied with the payout he received from FEMA. Still more residents — likely around 30, according to the mayor’s estimates — may never return to their damaged homes.

Some are skeptical MoDOT’s berm exacerbated flooding in Morehouse.

Larry Dowdy, president of the Little River Drainage District, said Morehouse and areas to the town’s north and west received 75 percent of their total annual rainfall in a 10-day period in April. Water in drainage ditches generally runs in the direction of Morehouse, and flooding was already occurring, he said.

“There’s no way that living in the Delta you can avoid that happening when you get that much rain,” Dowdy said.

“If the rain had fallen over a 24- or 30-day period, it could have been different. It was just too much too quick.”

Improvement projects The drainage district will perform major maintenance work on three ditches near Morehouse as needed to clean up from the flood. Dowdy said the projects will be completed in the next 18 to 24 months and that the work will take care of normal rainfall runoff.

The corps will also perform dredging of all the major arteries in the drainage system between now and 2013.

That project should improve conditions for the future, Dowdy said, but even if the dredging had taken place before the record rainfall, he believes Morehouse would have still seen the same level of flooding.

Shelton acknowledged MoDOT did not contact city officials when the decision was made to build the berm. If the department had foreseen worsening flooding min, Poindexter’s attorney.

McMenamin said deliberations in the jury room aren’t recorded, and other jurors from the Robinson trial will be called to testify to what occurred there.

“If you ever want to put a chill in somebody who is potentially serving on a jury, tell them they face a felony if they don’t answer a question right,” said Wilson, the attorney in the drug case.

“They’re trying to show you committed a crime by not speaking. That is not right.”

Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle said he wouldn’t comment on a current case.

in Morehouse, it would have notified residents to evacuate that afternoon, he said.

“We did follow up the next day when we heard there were problems,” he said, “and we checked with SEMA to see if they wanted us to remove that berm.”

The will of the state emergency management agency was that U.S. 60 be kept open, he said. MoDOT also brought in pumps to get water out of affected areas as quickly as possible the next morning, he said.

Shelton said that ultimately he is unsure if the berm actually caused water levels to rise in Morehouse.

“It was an awful situation,” he said. “Certainly I regret that anybody was flooded out.

It was just a very stressful and difficult time.”

Leija said MoDOT employees told city officials that no notification was given because the department didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.

“Inconvenience?” he asked.

“There’s a lot of people who lost everything. It might not have seemed like much, but to them it was everything.”

U.S. Rep. JoAnn Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, agrees with Morehouse residents who want MoDOT held financially responsible for damages and said the department should have spoken to city officials.

“The fact of the matter is, MoDOT still refuses to accept blame and responsibility for it, which is very frustrating,” she said. “I understand what they were trying to do, but if you are going to artificially create a dam that’s going to totally flood and cause serious dollars worth of damage, then you need to go and talk to the citizens. You’ve got to have a meeting and say, ‘these are our alternatives.’ You don’t just go and do it and all of a sudden people wake up and there is water coming in. It was an outrage,” Emerson said.

Despite a long recovery — which according to Leija is not over yet — the town is starting to get back to normal, he said. New homes and duplexes have replaced torn-down structures, and a Dollar General store recently opened, bringing in new business. City records damaged in the flood are mostly repaired and stacked waiting to be stored in the old elementary, which is now city hall. Leija said the population is steadying as well, which he knows because he has been closely monitoring the number of utility meters in service. He’s also hoping the new space the city has at the school will help them prepare for more disaster, if one comes. He and other city employees are collecting and storing hospital equipment, cots, long-term foods and water. They’ll be ready, he said, if it happens again. eragan@semissourian.com 388-3627

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5A

SAVE THE DATE Want to know what’s happening in Southeast Missouri? Find and submit events at semoevents.com.

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Parents of GRADUATING

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Once again the Southeast Missourian is making it possible for you to publish your high school graduate’s childhood photo in our special Graduation issue featuring local high schools.

Questions? Call 573-335-6611

We want your stuff

Fill out the form below, attach it to your favorite childhood photo of your graduate and drop it by the Southeast Missourian office in Cape Girardeau or Jackson by Monday April 30th, with $10.

Our special Graduation issue will publish on Tuesday May 8th.

Your photo & a copy of the publication can be picked up after publication.

You can also mail in your form and photo with a $10 check to: Graduates Southeast Missourian PO Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO 63702-699

and We’ll pick it up!

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Thurs 12pm-8pm, Fri 12pm-5pm, Sat 10am-1pm

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Editor: Spencer Cramer / 388-3632

April 29, 2012

REGION

Local winner

Page 9C

Page 5C

BABY STEPS

KRISTEN PIND

~ kpind@semissouria

n.com

as daddy down a slide Cooper slidingside watching. stands to the

Spring brings home a stinky little boy

the appeared in originally This column a monthly digital magazine To sign up Flourish ezine, Missourian. in print Flourish from the Southeast or to receive times a year, go for the ezine four urian. to www.semisso /subcom/flourish cellisscribe or email .com. semissourian fever, I have spring it! no doubt about never With winter up really showing my fill me giving and kind of of snow, we RISTEN IND early hit springtime are of our windowsbeginhouse. All the since off in the Pind has been flowers open; the heat and the trees and ning of March, are in bloom. Cooper was just beginning rolling around Last spring person, and little seeing, feeling to be his own rollie pollie, first time. Now he like a little for the yard and across the tasting everything or sprinting It is only the first is running been everything. getting into and we have already we week of April many times to count, work, too to the park almost every night after with play outside almost all day outside and he spends that I Grandma. until this spring but a It really wasn’t is no longer a baby, baby ing anymore, realized my is a isn’t sweet-smell smiley. He toddler. He en todcuddly and and he isn’t us, attitude-riddalready twos have stinky, rambunctio the terrible dler! I think and sweaty begun! every night He is too He comes home his fingernails. anymore, with dirt under love on Mommy and Daddy busy to kiss wrestle with pose for d ld prefer to

K

All-Missourian

C

HOME SHOWCASE of 2012.

Page 4C

A $5 million winning Missouri Lottery ticket reportedly was purchased in Cape Girardeau.

Page 5A

29, 2012 • SECTION

GOOD TIMES Russ Gospel singer a Taff will performin benefit concert 4.

Jackson May

DR. GROW makes Paul Schnare ns some suggestio the to do during gardening season

MINISTRY FOCUS talks Deashia Swan about the lessons get from women can of the the women Bible.

SPORTS

Good Times SUNDAY, APRIL

P

FRED LYNCH

This house

at 125 S. Spanish

St. in Cape

Old Town Cape

BY ASHLEY JONES ISSOURIAN

SOUTHEAST M

Girardeau will

be part of the

third Downtown

to host historic

Historic Home

~ flynch@semissouria

and Garden

n.com

Tour.

n tour home and garde

d the Downimplemente plan grew Girardeau Plan. This n town Strategic Revitalizatio Downtown for Missouri out of the Assistance

and Economic downInitiative. to increase (DREAM) will showcase it as a way Old Town Cape its third annual “We are using downtown,” said during Old living and Garden town living interest in executive director of Historic Home feature six Downtown Marla Mills, which will Saturday, plan Tour. The tour, Town Cape. further this to take place homes, is set 12 to 4 p.m.

The tour helpsthe different types of to enjoy our May 12 from by showcasing downtown. According for people “It’s a service to promote downtown homes locatedhave featured everything and and Old Town downtown to Mills they to big homes. organizer living,” event Lisa Bertrand said. from apartments Cape volunteer Old Town Cape 2009, In July of

we show on all of cool homes that there is “The kind awareness the tour raise downtown,” Mills said. kind of livinghome, located on 306 Bertrand’s St., is one of the six e is a three-story Independenc featured. It said homes to be was built in 1906. She floors home which inlay woodenroom. it has wonderful room and dining from in the living salvaged material Bertrand usedantique shop to remodel her husbands room. the family Page 9C See HOME,

Old Town Cape is preparing for its third home and garden tour.

Page 1C

Find out who made the All-Missourian girls basketball team.

Page 1B

Cape council, staff mull city topics at retreat

The flash detonated a real-life nightmare.

Birds Point sowed economic insomnia.

When would they reap revenue again?

A SMOKING BAN, at least for restaurants in Cape Girardeau, could be back up for discussion

Sooner than they dreamed.

BY SCOTT MOYERS

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN There were new ideas, such as more high-dollar water toys for Cape Splash Family Aquatic Center and finding what looks to be expensive land for a new industrial park. There were updates on old themes, including a forthcoming rental inspections program and how best to manage deer that roam inside the city limits.

And there were even a few surprises, including a suggestion that the idea of a smoking ban be revisited and a delicate conversation about the city’s ability to condemn the Plaza Galleria, the former skating rink that has sat without a tenant for at least a decade.

The Cape Girardeau City Council’s annual retreat Friday touched on almost every aspect of local government, from budgets and taxes to pleas from department heads to address what they see as vital needs. While no decisions were reached Friday, the daylong retreat at the Osage Centre offered some insight into what could become city priorities over the next five years.

Considering that much of the retreat served simply as a brainstorming session, some of those suggestions may never come to pass.

Councilwoman Loretta Schneider brought up one of the day’s biggest surprises, saying she would favor a citywide smoking ban at least for restaurants.

Last year, Cape Girardeau voters rejected a proposed smoking ban in bars and restaurants by about 300 votes. Schneider said that voters said no, in her opin-

LAURA SIMON~lsimon@semissourian.com

John Moreton walks along the eroded farmland June 1 in the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway.

“The guy upstairs took care of us.”

On this day, April 29

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN

F

armers feared the worst as water rushed over fields of winter wheat, filled silos storing their profits and engulfed the houses they called home.

A year after the intentional breach of the Birds Point levee by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, fourth generation floodway farmer Eddie Marshall is still repairing the damage and counting what the breach cost him.

But he’s also counting his blessings.

“At the end of the year, we ended up with decent crops. The guy upstairs

U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plan to breach the Birds Point levee was appropriate. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster appealed the decision. The sheriff of Mississippi County asked the National Guard to activate a mandatory evacuation for residents of the floodway.

For a complete timeline of the Flood of 2011 or to see the photos from last year, go to semissourian.com/flood2011.

1 dead after storm blows down St. Louis beer tent

BY JIM SALTER

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ST. LOUIS — High winds swept through a beer tent where 200 people gathered after a Cardinals game Saturday, killing one and critically injuring at least five others, authorities said. But the owner of the

Photo gallery

BY MELISSA MILLER

Cape river level: 45.3 feet Cape flood stage: 32 feet Cairo river level: 59.00 feet Cairo flood stage: 40 feet Rainfall: 0

bar said it was lightning — not wind — that killed the patron.

At least 17 were hospitalized and up to 100 people were treated at the scene after officials said straightline winds whipped through a large tent outside Kilroy’s See TENT, Page 10A

See photo galleries, view an interactive timeline and read coverage of the flood at semissourian. com/flood2011. took care of us. Surprisingly enough, it turned out quite well,” Marshall said.

The year turned out a whole lot better than anybody ever envisioned it could, said Kevin Mainord, sales and marketing director for MRM Ag Services near East Prairie.

“We were blessed in that our year was down as far as gross dollars, but we still had a pretty profitable year,” said

Mainord, who also farms in the floodway.

“I think most farmers would make the same statement.”

Neither Marshall nor Mainord said they had to cut any of their staff as a result of the breach.

“We thought at the time, it might come to that, but we felt like the right thing to do was to keep people employed,” Mainord said.

Many anxious farmers stood on the setback levee, watching what they’d prayed wouldn’t happen as the Birds Point levee exploded just after 10 p.m. May 2. The Ohio River at Cairo, Ill., set

Blog

See FLOOD, Page 10A

Get text messages with National Weather Service storm warnings for free by going to semissourian. com/textalerts.

Rule restricting farm chores withdrawn THE PROPOSED rule aimed to increase protections for children working in agriculture and referenced statistics from farm accident studies

BY MELISSA MILLER

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN A proposed rule restricting children who work on family farms has been withdrawn by the U.S. De-

partment of Labor after thousands of comments were received opposing it.

The department withdrew the rule, put forth last year, Thursday saying that it would not be pursued for

the duration of the Obama administration.

The rule aimed to increase protections for children working in agriculture and referenced several statistics from farm accident studies. The justification included information that agriculture has the second-highest fatality rate among young workers, age 15 to 24, at

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This weekend we visited the Cape Girardeau Central, Meadow Heights and Leopold proms. Look for photo galleries later today at semissourian.com/promphotos.

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21.3 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, compared to 3.6 across all industries, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. The proposed rule also cited concerns with the exposure of young workers to pesticides.

The measure would have

WEATHER:

Prom photos

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ion, only because the proposal was too restrictive.

“I believe allowing smoking really hurts their business,” Schneider said. “And obviously it’s a health issue.”

Councilman John Voss said he was conflicted and reluctant to dictate policy to a private business. But he said he would “enjoy a smoke-free Cape more” than one that allows smoking in public places. While some council members talked like they didn’t want to touch the issue, Voss said he would be willing to continue talking about it, noting the council could be proactive and pass a less restrictive ordinance.

Voss did acknowledge such an attempt would likely come with public backlash.

“It will be controversial,” Voss said. “I don’t know if we have the fortitude to handle it, quite honestly. ...

We will take some arrows in the back, I guarantee you.”

In other discussions, Mayor Harry Rediger noted during a briefing on development services that city and economic development officials have been looking for land to convert into a new economic development park. Such land costs anywhere from $17,000 to $40,000 an acre, Rediger said, calling the need a “huge issue that’s looming out there.”

Parks and Recreation Department director Julia Thompson told the council that a final recommendation for upgrades to Capaha Park and the city’s trail system should be brought to them by September. A master plan for how to move forward with the city’s parks system should also be in place to serve as a “developed strategy” before a possible vote to extend the city’s parks sales tax in 2018.

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Movie times, 10B Obituaries, 8A Opinion, 6A

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Volume 108 • Issue 177

H:82 L: 61 Showers

10A

FROM PAGE ONE / REGION

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Flood

From Page 1A a record that day of 61.7 feet.

Water roared through the 9,000-foot-long hole blown in the levee and according to the corps, within an hour, the Cairo gauge reading had dropped six inches. By 6 a.m. the next morning, it had dropped more than a foot.

Farmers traveled in boats, across more than 20 feet of water in places, to survey the damage.

Immediately after the breach, many in the floodway questioned whether they’d be able to plant a crop at all in 2011.

“There was about 60 days when there was not a lot of activity either inside the spillway or outside the spillway,” Mainord said.

Jeff Cox of French Implements, a John Deere dealer in Charleston, Mo., said he thought the company would see a huge loss last year, but that turned out not to be the case.

“Even though the levee was breached, we were really fortunate that a lot of the crop got in, prices were good and yields were better than expected,” he said.

Most of the county’s wheat crop, however, was left a matted, muddy mess after the waters receded. In most instances these fields had to be bush-hogged or burned off.

While 89,200 acres of wheat were planted in Mississippi and New Madrid counties last year, 24,900 acres less than that were harvested, according to

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

The remnants of farmland are seen June 1 along Mississippi County Road 310 in the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway.

Crop production in Mississippi and New Madrid counties in bushels Corn Soybeans Wheat

2011 14,462,000 14,919,000 3,778,000

2010 20,681,000 13,150,000 2,348,000

Difference -6,219,000 1,769,000 1,430,000

Est. Loss/Gain -$39,801,600 $21,051,100 $9,438,000

Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service *Estimated values based on USDA Average Market Year Prices

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. At last year’s average yields of 60 bushels per acre at 2011’s marketing year price of $6.60 per bushel, that comes to a loss of $9.86 million. However, total wheat production in these counties increased from the previous year because about twice as much wheat had been planted in 2011 than in 2010 and crops outside the floodway did well.

It was June before the water receded and fields could be prepared — far too late in

the season to plant corn.

Last year, 41,400 fewer acres of corn were planted in New Madrid and Mississippi counties than during 2010.

The counties’ corn production dropped from 20.6 million bushels in 2010 to 14.4 million bushels last year, according to USDA statistics. At 2011’s marketing year price of $6.40 per bushel, that’s a loss of $39.8 million.

Once the floodway dried out enough to work the fields, Mississippi and New

Tent

Madrid county farmers got to work planting soybeans.

As a result, 33,000 more acres of soybeans were planted in 2011 than in the previous year, according to USDA statistics. A total of 366,500 acres of soybeans were planted in New Madrid and Mississippi Counties producing 14.9 million bushels of soybeans.

Crop insurance helped those who had it, paying out $21.9 million in indemnities last year in Mississippi and New Madrid counties, according to the USDA’s Risk

Labor

From Page 1A

From Page 1A

Sports Bar, near Busch Stadium. The crowd was celebrating after the Cardinals had beat Milwaukee 7-3 earlier in the afternoon.

Eddie Roth, director for the St. Louis Department of Public Safety, said winds of about 50 mph shattered aluminum poles that held up the tent, which was located south of the stadium. The force of the wind blew the tent onto an adjacent railroad bridge.

“It was crazy, scary,” said Annie Randall, whose family owns Kilroy’s. “We’re just so sorry this happened.”

Kilroy’s owner Art Randall described a short burst of a storm — perhaps five seconds, he said — with a massive wind that lifted the huge tent, threw it perhaps 100 feet into the air and sent the aluminum poles and most everything in the tent airborne.

When he heard the boom, he initially thought a train had derailed into the tent.

As the wind blew, a bolt of lightning crashed into the bar, Randall said. He said firefighters told him it was a lightning strike — not flying debris — that killed the man.

“At some point in that five seconds, we were getting lightning strikes, and

KSDK-TV

Officials respond to the scene where a tent blew over Saturday after high winds crossed the area in St. Louis.

The tent was set up next to Kilroy’s Sports Bar, where St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said a few hundred people were celebrating after the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers in a baseball game. apparently one of our customers got hit by lightning right in the middle of the dance floor,” Randall said.

Randall said he screamed for help and three customers ran over to administer CPR, but they couldn’t save the man.

Randall looked around “and saw 50 bodies scattered everywhere.”

St. Louis public safety director Eddie Roth said the man killed appeared to be in his 50s. His name has not been released.

Roth said the tent had passed inspection and it didn’t appear there would be any violation, although the investigation is ongoing.

Randall described a scene in which barstools, pedestals and a 100-pound bass amplifier were flying through the

air. The disc jockey working the party was struck by the amp and knocked unconscious, he said, and people were scurrying to help one another.

“My wife had people in the beer cooler — we had the beer cooler loaded with injuries,” Randall said. “It was a triage deal.”

Kilroy’s is among several bars near Busch Stadium, and many bars set up tents for the excess business after Cardinals games. Crowds were also large because the St. Louis Blues were playing against the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday night in the first game of the NHL’s Western Conference semifinals.

The St. Louis area was under thunderstorm and tornado warnings several times Saturday.

WE’RE JUST A CLICK AWAY FROM WHERE YOU ARE. READ THE SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN ONLINE AT SEMISSOURIAN.COM

SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY’S SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK

is bringing its highly ranked, accredited Master of Social Work program to the Southeastern Missouri region.

– Structured so that full-time working people can earn a master’s degree.

– Allows you to earn your degree in as little as three years or two with advanced standing.

– Course schedules are convenient and flexible, classes meeting only twice per month on Saturdays in Cape Girardeau.

– At least 75 percent of the classes are taught by SLU campus faculty.

barred children younger than 16 years old from jobs like operating power equipment, driving four wheelers or tractors, branding and breeding farm animals and working on ladders at heights over six feet unless the child’s parent is the sole owner of the farming operation.

Some educators said the proposed rule also put the hands-on component of high school agriculture programs at risk.

“The DOL made the right decision in allowing veteran farmers and agriculturalists to volunteer as caretakers in the task of educating our children about farm safety by working with them sideby-side, instead of processing them through government training, or worse, denying them access to hands-on safety education altogether,” Laura Nothdurft, agriculture instructor at Jackson High School, said

Retreat From Page 1A

Councilman Mark Lanzotti told Thompson that he’d heard from constituents that not enough aquatics features were at Cape Splash for children ages 10 to 15. Thompson responded that such features, like water slides, can sometimes cost as much as $750,000.

“I’m not saying we have the money to do them,” Lanzotti said. “ ... I’m not suggesting that’s a negative. I’m just saying it’s a perception.”

Also in the planning stages are specialized parks for dogs and skateboarders, Thompson said, which have been discussed before.

Police chief Carl Kinnison reiterated his need for a new or expanded police department, calling it a “constant struggle” to try to make do in such cramped quarters.

Fire chief Rick Ennis talked about what he thinks is a need for more storm sirens. The

Management Agency, which operates the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation.

Most of this was for lost corn crops.

Marshall estimates he lost $1 million worth of wheat, but he had crop insurance that covered the losses. This was the first year he’d purchased insurance on his wheat, but decided to do so because he knew the river was high and there was a lot of snow pack up north.

He’s received some assistance from the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service to repair his farmland. Last year he had 1,500 acres of his 8,000 acre floodway farm damaged to the point he couldn’t plant it. This year he’s down to just about 300 acres that aren’t farmable.

He is filling the crevices in his fields where the river tried to cut a new channel through, which has already cost him nearly $400,000.

He expects to spend about that much more before he’s finished.

NRCS has provided $4 million in grants to farmers to help repair farmland through its Emergency Conservation Program administered by the USDA’s Farm Service agency. NRCS also provided $9.2 million to clean out and repair a network of drainage ditches through the floodway. This work is underway now.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped in to help repair roads, bridges and other public infrastructure destroyed in the levee breach.

FEMA has obligated $8.3 million for 116 projects in in an email.

Nothdurft herself was involved in 4-H and FFA projects she says were supervised by adults who were concerned for her safety. It was these experiences that led her to choose a career as an agriculture educator. She even made a down payment on a house with a cattle herd that grew out of projects with these agricultural education programs.

“If the DOL proposed rule had stood, it would have devastated our nation’s Agricultural Education Programs; but, worse, it would have stolen the rights of students to learn productivity, problem solving, community, and safety awareness next to committed, caring, wise adults,” she said.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, Sen. Roy Blunt and Gov. Jay Nixon issued statements Friday supporting the department’s decision to withdraw the proposed rule. Emerson and Blunt had sent letters to the department urging the rule making effort be abandoned.

“We don’t need much proof that this Administration doesn’t understand rural council seemed interested in at least funding four more to bring the city’s total to eight at a cost of about $100,000. Ennis said the biggest issue facing the department, however, is expanding its emergency medical service to include ambulance transportation.

“We’ve been kind of dancing around the subject for the past several years,” Ennis said.

Council members agreed that the issue needs to be explored, with at least some of them expressing frustration at the city fire trucks beating private ambulances to medical calls only to see the reimbursement for services go to the private ambulance company, and not to the fire department.

During a general council discussion, the council also talked about deer management, a controversial issue that has been hotly contested for months. At least five of the council members — Voss, Rediger, Lanzotti, Trent Summers and Meg Davis Proffer — indicated Friday that they supported a managed archery hunt in the city limits. Sch-

Mississippi County and $2.02 million for 155 projects in New Madrid County.

FEMA also provided assistance to 629 households in New Madrid and Mississippi Counties whose homes were damaged in last spring’s flooding. These families received $5.2 million in federal aid.

The Small Business Administration also stepped in to provide home loans for families who lost their homes to the floodwaters.

Thirty-nine home loans totaling $2.6 million were granted by the Small Business Administration to families in Mississippi and New Madrid counties. Four business loans for $125,200 were also granted by the SBA in these counties.

It’s difficult to try to put a dollar amount on the ultimate effect the levee breach had on the local economy, said Dr. Bruce Domazlicky, director of the Center for Economic and Business Research at Southeast Missouri State University.

During the second half of last year, employment in Mississippi County was about 120 individuals fewer than in the first half, he said.

But it’s difficult to say how much, if any, of that decline was related to the breach.

Still, it’s suggestive, Domazlicky said.

Retail sales in Mississippi County increased in the second half of last year, about 6 percent higher than in the first half of the year.

“Overall, the data does not paint a clear picture of the effect on the county,” Domazlicky said. mmiller@semissourian.com 388-3646

America, but this proposal was clearly out of step with the reality of growing up on a farm or ranch in Missouri and many other parts of the country,” Emerson said in her statement.

Blunt is a co-sponsor of the “Preserving America’s Family Farm” Act, a bipartisan bill, calling on the department to withdraw the regulations.

The department’s decision was criticized by the Human Rights Watch organization, saying the rule shielded hired child farmworkers from the most dangerous tasks.

Human Rights Watch in a news release Friday called agriculture the most dangerous work open to children in the United States. In 2010, the latest figures available, 16 children younger than 16 were fatally injured at work in the U.S.; 12 of them worked on farms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. mmiller@semissourian.com 388-3646

neider, who favors trapping the deer, said she would vote against it. City staff is bringing back a plan that considers several options at the council’s May 21 meeting.

Near the end of the meeting, before the council went into closed session, Lanzotti brought up the Plaza Galleria and what it would take to condemn the building, raze it and make it available for development. Lanzotti noted that the former ice-skating rink is in a prime and growing economic development area and his comments suggested frustration at it sitting vacant so long.

City attorney Eric Cunningham said that it could be done under the city’s dangerous buildings ordinance, specifying that it would not be taken by eminent domain.

Another highlight from the retreat included a likely 2-percent cost-of-living adjustment for city employees, which is 1 percent higher than last year, which would cost the city about $280,000. smoyers@semissourian.com 388-3642

Benton man arrested on drug charges SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN

TO LEARN MORE

about SLU’s part-time Master of Social Work program, visit msw.slu.edu or call 314.977.2752.

BENTON, Mo. — A 30year-old Benton man was in the Scott County Jail on Friday on $25,000 bond following a narcotics investigation that resulted in his arrest, the sheriff ’s department said in a news release.

A search of Shuntell Walls’ home Tuesday re-

Editor: Spencer Cramer / 388-3632

vealed about 5 ounces of marijuana and three Ecstacy pills, according to a probable-cause affidavit. Deputies booked Walls into the jail on two charges of possession of a controlled substance and one charge of unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia.

The search of the home also revealed plastic bag-

gies, scales, a marijuana “grinder” and a list of names with dollar figures to whom Walls allegedly sold substances, the affidavit said.

When asked if there were any more illegal substances in the home, Walls responded, “No, you just missed it,” and “Dude done picked it up,” according to the affidavit.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 REGION

NATION

Tax licenses

This year, 20 Cape Girardeau County businesses have lost sales tax licenses for failing to turn in tax payments.

Page 3A

Day of protest Hundreds of activists across the U.S. joined the worldwide May Day protests Tuesday.

Page 5A

Man and wildlife were forced to higher ground.

Pinhook, shattered and scattered, is gone.

Some hope to escape via buyout.

The flood’s scars remain.

SPORTS

2-1 victory

St. Vincent’s girls’ soccer team is now 18-2 with Tuesday’s 2-1 win over Notre Dame.

Page 1B

Ill. panel: Area prison should not be closed

7-3 VOTE: The final decision on Tamms belongs to Gov. Pat Quinn

BY MELISSA MILLER

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN TAMMS, Ill. — A state commission recommended Tuesday that the Tamms Correctional Center not be closed to save the state money.

The Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability voted 7-3 to recommend to Gov. Pat Quinn that the center, which employs about 300 people, remain open.

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

Debra Tarver stands inside her flood-ravaged Pinhook home April 23. Tarver lived all but 10 years of her life in Pinhook. Mud cakes the carpet and crunches with each step. Her grandson took his first steps along the hallway from her kitchen.

On this day, May 2 Cape river level: 46.2 feet Cape flood stage: 32 feet Cairo river level: 61.05 feet Cairo flood stage: 40 feet Rainfall: 1.44 inches The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers exploded a large section of the Birds Point levee just after 10 p.m. The corps hoped the move would divert up to 4 feet of water off the river at Cairo, Ill. By midnight, the river stage at Cairo had dropped from the record crest of 61.72 feet at10 p.m. to 61.13 feet. Heavy downpours overnight, with some areas receiving 5 inches of rain, caused the Black River to rise sharply near Poplar Bluff, Mo., where a week earlier a flash flood caused the emergency evacuation of 1,000 people.

‘The floodway will never be the same. But we survived.’

BY SCOTT MOYERS

Photo gallery

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN Randy Sutton had heard that the three-star general with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had officially made the decision.

He had seen the Missouri National Guard trucks roll through, ordering everyone from their homes.

And now, the Mississippi County farmer was along a dark rainy roadway with everyone else awaiting the blast.

The charges were set.

After a lifetime of living in the floodway, it was not a hypothetical anymore. They were going to do it.

Still, when the explosions flashed through the night sky, Sutton says he was struck by how honestly surprised he was.

“They really did it,” he

See photo galleries, view an interactive timeline and read coverage of the flood at semissourian.com/ flood2011. remembers thinking. “I can’t believe this. They turned the water loose on us. Here we go.”

The decision to activate the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, which began a year ago today, was made by Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh, who cited record-setting rains that were continuing to pummel the region. The Cairo, Ill., river gauge was at 61 feet and rising. Communities in several states were fighting to keep the waters at bay.

Corps crews detonated the charges along the

earthen levee shortly after 10 p.m., intentionally flooding the 130,000-acre floodway. Walsh and other experts said the activation would offer relief to several beleaguered communities in Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky.

Sutton, who had watched the waters wash over land that he had farmed all of his life, said it has been a nerve-racking year since. In the days after, a pilot flew Sutton over the floodway. He saw the place where he had driven a tractor since he was old enough to walk had been replaced by a huge lake, with rooftops jetting out. He recalls that it looked unreal to him.

Later, when it took a boat to get to his 2,200acre farm, Sutton recalls See BREACH, Page 8A

Sen. Blunt critical of pace at Birds Point

BY JIM SALTER

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ST. LOUIS — A year after the intentional breach of the Birds Point levee in Southeast Missouri, Sen. Roy Blunt is criticizing the U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers for its rebuilding pace.

The Missouri Republican on Tuesday sent a letter to Maj. Gen. Meredith W.B. Temple, acting commander of the corps, urging fast restoration of the levee to its original height of 62.5 feet. Blunt called full restoration vital

for farmers and landowners whose properties are protected by the levee.

The corps has temporarily rebuilt the levee to 55 feet and hopes to get it back to 62.5 feet by the end of the See BLUNT, Page 8A

The Southeast Missourian has closed its front doors as work on the Broadway corridor project moves into the 300 block. The Southeast Missourian and Concord Publishing will have customer service representatives set up in the rear of the building at 301 Broadway to accommodate customers until the block reopens to traffic. Several spaces in the parking lot behind the building will be reserved for customers. For more information, call 335-6611.

17 become citizens in courthouse ceremony

BY ERIN RAGAN

SOUTHEAST MISSOURIAN Seventeen brand-new U.S. citizens weren’t born but made in Cape Girardeau on Tuesday, and for many, it was only after years of patient waiting.

A naturalization ceremony at the Rush H. Limbaugh Sr. U.S. Courthouse drew a full house of family, friends and community members to see the immigrants from 11 countries

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sworn in by Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson was the guest speaker.

Following an introduction

by Limbaugh, Emerson said she believed the day’s ceremony was not really for acknowledging the applicants’ completion of their citizenship requirements but instead for celebrating a beginning.

“I hope you can look at

WEATHER:

Prom photos

Southeast Missourian webmaster James Baughn highlights local outdoor attractions on his Pavement Ends blog. Read the latest on One Horse Gap at semissourian.com/blogs.

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Closed in front

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Although its recommendations are not legally binding, no governor has ever closed a state facility over the commission’s recommendations, said Illinois Sen. Gary Forby.

“I think they made the right decision. Now we’ve just got to convince the governor this is the right way to go. Tamms needs to stay open,” Forby said.

Tamms Correctional Center, in Alexander County, has both minimum- and maximum-security units housing 375 inmates.

State leaders had proposed closing the prison, along with several other Department of Corrections

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Movie times, 12A Obituaries, 7A Opinion, 6A

Speak Out, 6A Sports, 1B TV listings, 12A

Volume 108 • Issue 181

H:87 L: 65 Mostly sunny, humid

8A

FROM PAGE ONE

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Breach From Page 1A seeing a bobcat that was trapped on a rooftop. He would return several days to toss it meat from a local butcher’s shop.

“He was just trying to survive,” Sutton said. “I can relate.”

Sutton didn’t even know if he would be able to get a crop in. He tried not to worry. He knows the Bible says not to worry about tomorrow, that God will provide.

But he couldn’t help it. He tried to put a brave face on as often as he could so his worry didn’t infect his wife or three children.

Insurance worked for those who had it. Most of the residents have moved out. Now only farmers and their workers remain.

That’s all that will be left of the community that used to have thousands of residents years ago. Now, only a handful remain.

Cars used to zip by all day as Sutton farmed. Now, he sees only one or two.

He occasionally sees black smoke in the distance as another house burns. But he acknowledges now he actually came through with a decent crop. He didn’t make much money, but the losses weren’t as severe as they could have been.

“Through all of it, I feel like I was still very blessed,” Sutton said. “I was able to pay the banker back, and I lived through it. The floodway will never be the same.

But we survived.”

Not everything did.

Pinhook, a largely AfricanAmerican village in the floodway, has seen its more than 250 residents scatter.

The floodwaters ravaged their homes. The 35 who lived there at the time of the flood now live in places like Sikeston, Wyatt, Charleston and East Prairie, Mo. Debra Tarver, who was the town mayor, says the close-knit community still tries to get together once a month. They still hope that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will relocate the community as a whole, but some

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

LEFT: Mississippi County Sheriff Keith Moore walks toward landowners as they return to Highway 102 on May 9, 2011, after checking on their property in the floodway in Mississippi County. RIGHT: The same spot on Highway 102 as seen April 11. officials have suggested it seems unlikely.

Two homes have burned.

One resident has died since.

Even the Union Baptist Church, sacred to the people of Pinhook, has succumbed to fire since the flooding, Tarver said.

But Tarver refuses to be bitter.

Tonight, Tarver said, the residents are gathering for a dinner to try to plan for Pinhook Day. They want to still have the annual event that drew people back to their hometown from as far away as New York City.

They’re also planning a memorial walk and fundraiser later this month, she said.

“It may have broken us apart,” she said. “But it didn’t take away our drive to get back together. It did not break our spirit at all.

They haven’t broken that at all.”

Like many of the homes in Pinhook, water got into Tarver’s home several feet high. It ruined walls, carpets and possessions.

It was unliveable. Some of the people of Pinhook had insurance and others didn’t, she said.

Tarver likes to remember Pinhook at its best, she said, a community of “brothers and sisters” who looked after each other. Friends and neighbors scattered across side roads and down different turns, she said.

“Nothing about us has changed other than our homes being torn up,” she said. “If someone needs help, we know about it. It’s one big family, and I don’t think that family will ever die. Just because that happened to us doesn’t mean we’re going to lay down and play dead. We’re Pinhook and will always be Pinhook.”

But the flood was felt in many other communities outside of the floodway, too. Those people suffered losses at about this time last year, too. Milton Pecord, 91, of Olive Branch, Ill., watched as the people in his community fought to keep waters out of their homes.

But after two levees broke, it basically became a lost cause.

Pecord had lived in his house for nearly 40 years when the flood crept into it last year. It ruined insulation, walls, windows and floors.

Pecord is no stranger to floods.

“But this one was the worst flood we’ve ever had around here,” he said.

Pecord considered participating in the buyout, but instead took FEMA’s offer of $45,600 to make repairs.

He went to live with his daughter on higher ground

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while the work was being done.

But Pecord has no complaints about the way the government reacted. The money was in the bank before he even knew it was there, he said.

“I hated to be out of my home for eight months,” Pecord said. “But I’ve taken out $30,000 worth of flood insurance with the intention of staying. My plan right now is to stay here until I die.”

Several other residents of Olive Branch are still hopeful of participating in a federal buyout. Patti Thompson with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency said Tuesday that the application is still under review. The state had questions about the application, asking for corrections to addresses and updates to exclude applicants who had died. The homeowners have

sent the information back to FEMA, which is still reviewing the application, she said. She did not know how much longer the review would last.

A year later, the flood-affected residents said the future is still uncertain. Sutton worries that the corps will activate the floodway again in the future. The repairs are being made and the access wells are being installed so that it could be used again if need be. Tarver prays that her splintered community can be made whole again.

Worry abounds.

But Sutton still thinks about that bobcat from time to time. He even has photos of it.

“I’d like to think he made it and is still out there somewhere,” Sutton said. smoyers@semissourian.com 388-3642

LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

Workers smooth the land west of the intentional breach of the Birds Point levee April 11 in Mississippi County.

Blunt From Page 1A year, spokesman Bob Anderson said. He said a contract for the full rebuild is out for bid.

“We’ve got the funding,” Anderson said. “It’s just a matter of getting everything lined up with contractors.”

The corps is also rebuilding other damaged levees in Southeast Missouri, southwest Illinois and western Kentucky, he said.

The intentional breach May 2, 2011, flooded 130,000 acres of farmland and displaced 50 families.

“One year after the Birds Point levee breach, it is simply unacceptable that full restoration still remains months away,” Blunt said.

“Flood protection for people and property should always be the primary goal in river policy. Our communities cannot return to normal until we fully restore what was lost and rebuild stronger.”

The Birds Point levee protects a floodway designed to be opened in instances of extreme flooding. Last year’s flood set records in many locations south of St. Louis.

The corps detonated explosives that tore holes in the levee, allowing river water to pour over 130,000 acres of farmland. Corps officials

have defended the move as necessary given the magnitude of last spring’s flooding. Water threatened to top the floodwall in Cairo, Ill. The corps has said that breaching the levee prevented more than $112 billion in damage throughout the land surrounding the Mississippi River and its tributaries in the southern U.S. But Blunt is not alone in his criticism. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, has urged that the levee be restored to its original height as quickly as possible.

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, a Cape Girardeau Republican, said she believes the corps “jumped the gun” in deciding to activate the floodway, basing its decision on incorrect hydrology.

Anderson said there were areas south of Birds Point in direct danger unless something was done to lower the pool of water.

The corps has spent $25 million on the temporary levee now in place. While that offers protection against most floods, Anderson said, more significant flood events, such as those in 1973 and 2011, would top that level.

Fortunately, river levels are unusually low this spring.

The river level at Cairo is nearly 40 feet lower than it was a year ago.

“It’s amazing what one year can bring,” Anderson said.

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