Water flows over tops of levees in Missouri; flooding alert issued for Neb. nuclear plant

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Several levees in northern Missouri were failing Sunday to hold back the surge of water being released from upstream dams, and locals braced themselves for more breaches as the Missouri River dipped but then rose again.

A hole in the side of a Holt County levee continued to grow, deluging the state park and recreational area in Big Lake, a community of less than 200 people located 78 miles north of Kansas City. The water — some from recent rain — started pouring over levees Saturday night and Sunday morning in Holt and Atchison counties, flooding farmland, numerous homes and cabins.



In Nebraska, a flooding alert was issued for a second nuclear power plant. But officials said it was the least serious emergency notification issued, and the public and workers are not threatened.

The Missouri River dipped by almost 1 foot after the Big Lake breach in Missouri, but water started to rise again by Sunday afternoon, said Jud Kneuvean, chief of emergency management for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Kansas City District.

Kneuvean said he thought the flooding in the area wouldn’t start for another day or two, but the water level surged by about 2 feet from Saturday morning to Sunday morning. The corps suspects that the culprit was an influx of rainwater that combined with a surge from a notch cut in the breached Hamburg, Iowa, levee to allow trapped water to flow back into the river.

“I looked at it mid-evening (Saturday) and told one of my co-workers, ‘We are going to have levees start popping,’” Kneuvean said. “Within about an hour, we were getting the calls on them.”


Washington Post


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