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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Flood worries that prompted the U.S. polity to wind unstoppered a Siouan levee to ease push on whatever towns are wavelet downbound the river River, prompting more evacuations and discomfort as the Army Corps of Engineers weighs whether to purposely batch more realty with water.

The severance of southward Missouri's Birds Point levee was heralded by whatever Illinois towns along the river River as a needed comfort from achievement flooding, and the man who ordered that action says he haw do the aforementioned with another river River spillways as batch prospects mount.

Maj. Gen. archangel Walsh said he understood the interference at the corps' decision to kill the levee weekday and beam a surround of liquid over 130,000 acres of tilth the realty of Siouan proven suing to save. "But this was one of the comfort valves for the system," he added. "We were unnatural to ingest that valve."

That calculation to entertainer downbound the river and river rivers in the nation's midsection appeared to do its job. On weekday night, the river at Metropolis, Ill., measured 54.7 feet — most the aforementioned level it had been at the time of the blast. Without that breach, the river was forecast to hit steadily crept up to a upside of more than 58 feet.

In Cairo, the river had dropped to 60 feet, most a measure and a half modify than it was at the time of the breach. Cairo, a municipality of most 2,800 residents, is at the blending of the river and river rivers. Downstream of port — in southward Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, river and Louisiana — concerns are ontogeny as the river River continues to rise.

Memphis, where the river was at 43.8 feet Tuesday, could see a near-record upside of 48 feet on May 11, meet inches modify than the achievement of 48.7 feet in 1937. Water from the Wolf and Loosahatchie rivers already has seeped into parts of the suburbs, and whatever mobile home parks were swamped.

Flood fears prompted an crisis papers for 920,000 residents in Shelby County, where authorities closed whatever suburban streets and most 220 grouping were staying in shelters. Emergency officials there estimate that whatever 5,300 homes and businesses could be strained by high blamed at least partly on more than 11 inches of rain that hit soaked the metropolis area since Apr 25.

Flooding already has begun in Dyersburg, which is most 70 miles north-northeast of Memphis. Mayor Evangelist Holden said that grouping in parts of that city nearby the North Fork of the Forked Deer River should evacuate. Farther south, the modify river River was expected to upside substantially above batch stages in a region still dealing with the consequence of terminal week's deadly tornadoes.

Forecasters feature the river could break records in river set during catastrophic floods in 1927 and a decade later. Gov. Haley Barbour started warning grouping terminal week to verify precautions if they live in flood-prone areas nearby the river, scrutiny the behave of liquid agitated downriver to a swine agitated finished a python.

With tornados and the danger of rivers gone wild, "we're making a aggregation of black history here in river in Apr and May," said Jeff Rent, a river Emergency Management Agency spokesman.

Because the maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is specially flood-prone, the realty plans to evacuate the most medically vulnerable inmates by incoming Monday, then another inmates later.

Walsh has prefabricated country he haw ingest of another downstream "floodways" — basins surrounded by levees that crapper be designedly blown unstoppered to entertain floodwaters — to try to rein in the trouble.

Among those that could be broached are the 58-year-old Morganza floodway nearby in bicentric Louisiana and the Bonnet Carre floodway most 30 miles north of New Orleans. The 4-mile-wide Morganza has been pressed into assist meet once, in 1973. The Bonnet Carre — christened in 1932 — has been unsealed up nine nowadays since 1937, the most past in 2008.

Unlike the Siouan levee, these floodways crapper be unsealed using gates fashioned for the purpose, not explosives that unleashed the rush of floodwater into Birds Point that damaged or blasted as many as 100 homes and clean away crop prospects for this year. Walsh said there are no homes in the Bonnet Carre floodway and only scattered homes and tilth in the Morganza one.

On Tuesday, a assemble of 25 farmers sued the U.S. polity in Missouri, arguing that their realty nearby Birds Point had been condemned without competent compensation.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said farmers with crop insurance module be eligible for polity reimbursements if their realty was flooded. Other help module be acquirable for eutherian producers and tree farmers low the aforementioned programs fashioned for uncolored disasters. People who forfeited homes haw also be eligible for agricultural structure loans.

Missouri Gov. diplomatist Nixon said realty body would push to hit the Birds Point levee restored and restore the farmland's productivity. Walsh acknowledged it could be late season or primeval fall before the liquid full drains soured the land, and matter and wetness could do long damage.

After Memphis, the river is expected to upside May 12 at Helena, Ark., and boost southward in the following days. Forecasters prognosticate achievement levels at the towns of Vicksburg and Natchez, Miss.

High liquid already has closed downbound nine river casinos in northwest Mississippi's Tunica County, where most 600 residents hit been evacuated from flood-prone areas on the exclusive of the levee, county spokesman Larry Liddell said.

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Suhr reported from Metropolis and Cairo, Ill. Associated Press writers Jim Salter in Sikeston, Mo., Cain Burdeau in New Orleans, Erik Schelzig in Dyersburg, Tenn., and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.

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