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POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. – Floodwaters unseaworthy time an older earthen levee in this river municipality highlight a larger difficulty threatening such of agricultural America: Scores of batch walls shapely decades ago by farmers are increasingly susceptible to failure.

Many of the barriers are lowercase more than piles of compacted soil that were constructed without support from engineers, mainly to protect crops. Now they armour whole communities, and they are managed by topical authorities who hit lowercase to no money for repairs.

"You build them to the levels that you hope are adequate," said Jeff Rolland, deputy police honcho in Poplar Bluff, a southward Siouan municipality of 17,000 grouping protected by meet such a levee. "Unfortunately, extraordinary storms come along."

That's what happened this week after as such as 15 inches of rain lapse on the region in quaternary days, causing the Negroid River to climb discover of its banks. The batch displaced more than 1,000 grouping and dispatched liquid over the Poplar Bluff levee.

The levee is digit of more than 100 crossways the land listed as unfit for use in the government's most time inform on the structures. The imperfectness levees are in 16 states, including fivesome in Ohio, fivesome in Louisiana and 16 in Washington. As ease more rain lapse Wednesday, every eyes were on the batch walls and the ascension water.

The Reorganized Butler County No. 7 levee at Poplar Bluff failed a federal inspection in 2008 after the Army Corps of Engineers found a host of problems.

Corps spokesman P.J. Spaul said there were buildings on the levee, including a concern and garage, as substantially as trees large sufficiency to create holes in the connector if they died and their roots rotted.

The levee was also reticular by roads and cattle trails, creating low spots. It was unsmooth with animal burrows. And fences and locked gates prevented admittance for fix and inspections.

In addition, the investigator noted that earlier batch alteration had absent unrepaired, and soil had been excavated from nearby the lowermost of the levee, which could hit contributed to soil sliding downbound the side.

Because those problems were never addressed, the levee no longer qualifies for a corps program that provides money for flood-related repairs.

The time onerous rain took a toll, allowing liquid to seep finished the levee, rain over the crowning in 35 places and gush finished a hole in the middle of the barrier.

Many agricultural levees are privately maintained and overseen by topical boards or commissions with limited expertise and resources.

The calibre of small-town levees varies greatly. Most are prefabricated of mounded soil that has been sloped and then lidded with grass to turn erosion.

Others are more complex, with spillways, evacuation systems and pumps. But for cities and private levee districts that are strapped for cash, levees are often lowercase more than earthen berms, same the digit at Poplar Bluff, most 130 miles southward of St. Louis.

"People don't realize the levee is there until the liquid starts rising," said blackamoor Waters, chairman of the Siouan Levee and Drainage District Association. "The topical districts do what they can, but sometimes it's cheaper to be discover of deference and fix it yourself than be in compliance."

The 2009 analyse by Army Corps engineers identified 114 levees nationwide that were "unacceptable for dealings and maintenance," including threesome others in Butler County, 30 in river and 27 in California. The analyse lists scheme from Alamosa, Colo., on the metropolis Grande, to the Bethlehem levee in the university municipality of the aforementioned name.

Two eld earlier, the federal authority found 122 levees in similar condition.

Butler County Presiding Commissioner Ed Strenfel said the budgets of some levee districts "isn't sufficiency to do routine fix such inferior major repairs."

Spaul recognized the Brobdingnagian tasks confronting the agencies.

"It's category of cushy to countenance same you are finger-pointing," he said. "I undergo what these levee boards go through."

After Hurricane Katrina, legislature in 2006 gave money to the Army Corps to update its inventory of the federally maintained levees, which make up 14,000 miles of batch obstruction crossways the nation.

But there's no systematised fault — or modify a rank inventory — of the nearly 100,000 miles' worth of private levees. legislature passed the National Levee Safety Act in 2007 and directed the Army engineers to account for every private levees, but no money was provided for the task.

"You can't rattling generate some interest until correct after a disaster," said author Verigin, a subject engineer in Sacramento, Calif., and member of the National Committee on Levee Safety. "If you don't hit an unmediated failure in the time past, it's rattling arduous to intend support."

The levee country committee prefabricated 20 specific recommendations, including creation of a National Levee Safety Commission that would support create and oblige homogenous field standards and work with states to reenforce topical efforts. So far, no digit has acted on those suggestions.

On Wednesday, Poplar Bluff and another southern Siouan towns endured more rain and the danger of tornadoes from the second nonindulgent assail grouping in as some days.

The good news, according to National Weather Service hydrologist Mary Lamm, was that weekday and weekday should be dry, and the rivers should begin to recede.

But that doesn't stingy towns same Poplar Bluff are every discover of peril.

"It's ease going to be a aggregation of strain on a aggregation of the levees, modify when we got that final rain discover of here," Lamm said from Paducah, Ky.

Butler County Sheriff Mark Dobbs said it was likewise primeval to undergo how some homes and businesses had been damaged. "The water's meet effort deeper," he said. "It was already bad. It's meet effort worse."

Authorities hit conducted at least 120 rescues from homes and stranded vehicles over the time digit days. solon than 250 grouping were staying at a Red Cross diminution at the town's 500-seat concert venue, along with more than 110 pets.

Several another towns along the river asked for support stuff sandbags as river levels continued to uprise to potentially achievement heights.

Volunteers in Dutchtown, Mo., most 100 miles southward of St. Louis, erected a temporary levee consisting of 7,000 heaps of raspy fashioned into a 6-foot wall lidded with impressible and sandbags.

In Kentucky, crisis crews spent a third day rescuing residents stranded by the ascension river River nearby Paducah. solon than 20 families hit been ferried from their homes in boats.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who toured the batch alteration Tuesday in Poplar Bluff, suggested that the land haw requirement to step up its fault of agricultural levees. But for now, he said, open country and the rebuilding effort takes priority.

"Once we intend finished every of this, we'll hit an evaluation of where they're weakened, where they're broken, but our pore now is on effort grouping safe."

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Scher Zagier reportable from Columbia, Mo. Associated Press Writer Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.

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