Writer takes issue with column

EDITOR'S NOTE: This letter is in response to a column by Pat Ivey, titled, "It's only farmland, right?"

To the editor:

Ms. Ivey, I have just read your column, and while I do share most of the sentiments you express, I do have to take issue with a few thing you said.

1. You say the Corps took the "unprecedented" step of destroying the levee to save Cairo. This is simply wrong, the Bird's Point floodway was used once before after the river had topped the levee of the spillway. This was the precedent. Blowing up the levee prior to the river topping the levee of the spillway may have been unprecedented, and blowing up as much of the levee as they did, may be unprecedented, but the concept as whole has been used before.

2. I could be mistaken about this, but I think that with the two-levee system that makes the floodway a bowl, the river levees and the setback levees, water would have to breach the setback levee to enter into the ditches and streams that would lead it into the St. Francis and Pemiscot Bayou and Big Lake areas. As I understand it, the purpose of the third hole in the levee is to allow the water to rejoin the Mississippi River channel. Water from Lake Wappapello and other lakes will eventually find their way through Mississippi County, Ark., but the water east of the setback levees in Mississippi County Mo., should be confined to the Mississippi River channel.

3. In your closing you advocate for making all the levees stonger and doing away with the concept of floodways and spillways. This was the "levee only" mentality that led to the catastophic flooding of 1927. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/peopleevents/e_control.html). While it causes indigestion, and none of us like to see our farmers, friends and neighbors harmed by the use of the floodways and spillways, it is good science and good river management.

That being said, it irks me that the federal government says they're making the residents of the floodway whole, when they say they will give them low interest loans to build new housing. In my view, this was a "taking" and the federal government is responsible for replacing their homes in full ... period. With New York senators advocating for turning over the multi-million Osama Bin Laden bounty to the firefighters and policemen injured in 9-11 when they've already been compensated by the 9-11 fund, the federal government has the means to make good for these people whose homes were destroyed by deliberate government action. I understand that they had sold floodway easments, but the deliberate action of the government rendered the flood insurance that they've paid for useless and that is the taking.

I honestly believe that eventually they will be reimbursed in full, not with low interest loans, but it does anger me that that the government will make them fight for it, wasting more taxpayer money in trying to screw the little guy by fighting him in court.

This is what I'll be writing my senators and representative about.

Thank you for your time.

Scott Hill

Blytheville