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Crew Return Birds Point Center Crevasse To 55 Feet

Aerial image of the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway during the flood of 2011.
NASA Earth Observatory
/
Flickr

WYATT, MO (KRCU) - Construction crews completed Phase One work at the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway center crevasse on Tuesday. Phase One brings the levee back up to 55 feet on the gage at Cairo, Illinois.
 

Army Corps of Engineers Spokesperson Jim Pogue says the upper crevasse should be returned to 55 feet by the end of this week, while Phase One on the lower crevasse will be complete by November.
 

“The estimated completion date for Phase One on the upper is later this month, or basically this week,” Pogue said. “And then for the lower crevasse it is sometime in November. And then we’re still on track to complete all of the work by the end of the year.”

 

Pogue says work continues on the upper and lower crevasses.
 

“Phase Two, which we move directly into as soon as we finish Phase One, will take the levee back to the full 62 1/2 feet on the Cairo gauge with the operating mechanism. We’re still on track to finish all that work by the end of this year and we’ll have the levee back to its original condition,” Pogue said.

 

The Army Corps Corps of Engineers detonated three holes in the levee during last spring’s flood in 2011 in order to reduce river levels on the swollen Mississippi River.