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Flooding Still An Issue In Alexander County

By: Andy Waterman

ALEXANDER COUNTY-- Cleanup from this spring's flooding will take months, but in some places the flood is not even over. For three months, sandbags have done their best to hold back flood waters in the small village of East Cape Girardeau.

"We'd be glad to see it get dry around here for awhile," said East Cape resident Charles Curtis as he stood just feet from flooding.

Businesses in East Cape and McClure are closed until they dry out, acres of farmland have been turned into lakes, and some roads like are still impassible.

"When you get blocked up as much as this one is, it kind of gets a little aggravating getting around, but it'll get back to normal one of these days," Curtis said optimistically.

East Cape village trustee Bob Porter hopes normal is right around the corner. But he remembers the area is usually the last to dry out during a flood.

"Anything that comes down to the north of us ends up down here or south of us," Porter explained. "So it's just like being in a bathtub and the drain's plugged up because the river's high enough, we can't open the drains and let it out."

Much of the flooding is seepage and rainwater. To get rid of it, the village has to open gates to let it flow into the Mississippi, but they were just able to do that last week.

"The river has to be thirty-four feet or lower depending on how high it is in here before we can open the gates and let it out," said Porter.

Now waters are receding, and Porter is optimistic East Cape will be dry and in recovery mode soon.

"I'm hoping three weeks, but it's just a wild guess," he said. "Depending on the river, the river could actually come back up and it would stop it from running out. But personally I think maybe three weeks we'll be pretty much back to normal."

And it will be four months of flooding at that point, so it's safe to say a little normalcy is exactly what communities in Northwest Alexander County needs.