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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.
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