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Pacific Mayor Herbert Adams knows the roiling floodwaters of the Meramec River will return. It's just a matter of time.
The murky brown water can rise just as quickly as it retreated last week, and there's nothing to keep it from swamping the low-lying, southern part of his city.
"That is why I keep saying that we are acting like a big bird with our head in the sand. It is predictable," Adams said. "My prediction is that every day that we get up without some kind of protection, we're one day closer to the next flood." So when the Meramec broke free of its banks this last time - damaging 180 homes and 30 businesses in his town alone - Adams implored state and federal leaders to provide a levee or some other form of flood protection to shield Pacific from another watery mess in the future. The latest wave of river flooding has rekindled debate over levee building on eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois waterways. Throughout the St. Louis region, 89 federally recognized levees and flood protection systems have been erected along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their major tributaries.
Collectively, they're counted on to protect vast tracts that include residential neighborhoods, factories and interstate highways. But critics say levees are an expensive fix that have spawned widespread development on historically flood-prone land and have lulled people into a false sense of security.
Conservationists and some local university professors say levees alter the natural flows of rivers, making flooding worse for some unprotected tracts.
"If you have to build a levee, at what expense do you pay later when the flood heights are continually being increased?" said Dan Burkemper, executive director of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, a group that promotes preservation of flood plains. "At what point do you win? The water always flows to the next person without a levee."
Even the success of the $49 million Valley Park levee - which held its ground against the Meramec in its first major test - was countered by hotly disputed claims that it displaced water and caused some damage upstream.
