Nixon Blames Corp for Missouri Cropland Flooding

First posted on 10-19-2007

After recent heavy rains, a rising Missouri River is flooding croplands in western and central Missouri – a financial catastrophe for those farmers that Attorney General Jay Nixon says could have been avoided if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had acted to repair levees breached or damaged by floods last May. Nixon today called on the Corps to expedite the necessary permits to repair nearly 40 levees in Missouri, work the Attorney General says should have been approved by the Corps more than three months ago.

“If the Corps had acted in a timely fashion on the requests from farmers and levee districts to repair the levees that are being breached again, Missouri farmers would not be facing a disaster that could have been avoided,” Nixon said.

Reports received today indicate that flooding of farms between Kansas City and Boonville already has begun through levees breached last spring but never repaired by the Corps. Nixon said while the Corps’ inaction on repairing the levees has led directly to the current flooding, it was imperative for the Corps to act quickly with repairs to protect Missouri farms so farmers do not continue to pay a price for the Corps’ failure.

On Tuesday (Oct. 16), Nixon asked the Corps to suspend plans for a spring rise next year until the levees had been repaired and until a full assessment of the impact of a spring rise on Missouri was done. If the Corps had gone ahead with a spring rise last year as originally planned, Nixon said, the flooding in May in Missouri would have had even more disastrous results.

Read the letter sent to Brigadier General Gregg F. Martin of the Corps of Engineers from chief counsel Joseph Bindbeutel