Tagged: levee

Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, of Missouri, is threatening to block President Barack Obama's choice for Environmental Protection Agency administrator until plans are resolved for a long-stalled levee project in southeast Missouri.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill is joining two Republican colleagues in calling for federal agencies to move ahead with plans to close a 1,500-foot gap in a southeast Missouri levee, a project long delayed over environmental concerns.

McCaskill sent a letter in mid-December to the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, calling uncertainty and delays in the project "unacceptable."

Restoring the Birds Point-New Madrid Levee to its original height may take a little more time.

The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded contracts to three firms for work to repair the Birds Point levee in southeast Missouri, a levee intentionally breached by the corps at the height of spring flooding in 2011.

A new study suggests the Army Corps of Engineers made the right decision when it blew up the Birds Point-New Madrid levee last year.

The study’s authors argue the floodway would have been inundated with or without Corps action.

Ken Olson is a soil sciences professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he co-authored the study.