Valmeyer community High school, in Monroe County, under water after the levee break.

For the record: The St. Louis region’s political and business leaders have no excuse if they fail to act quickly to repair the levee system that protects Madison, Monroe and St. Clair counties. The threat is potentially catastrophic. The solution is eminently correctable.

The levee system protects more than 150,000 people and threatens thousands of businesses that employ more than 50,000 people. The levees were constructed in the 1940s and 1950s to protect against a 500-year flood. But in 2007, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, citing design deficiencies and needed repairs, refused to certify the levees as fit to withstand even a 100-year flood.

The issue is not glamorous. The most immediate threat is posed to poor and working-class communities that are home to gritty industrial enterprises.

But the calamity that would result if the levees gave way is unthinkable. A conservative estimate by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments of the immediate economic consequences puts the loss at $12 billion. That’s based on damage floodwater could cause to residential and commercial structures and just one year’s loss in economic output.

There also would be other certain, but less quantifiable, consequences:

• Tens of thousands of people would lose or be dislocated from their homes and jobs. Nothing more than basic relief would be available to them.

• Regional commerce is dependent on interstate highways, major bridges and railroad facilities that could be shut down or constricted for long periods.

• Significant stretches of flood plain protected by the levees are contaminated, including a notorious Superfund waste site in Sauget. Broken levees could create a massive public health crisis.

• Already the levee system’s problems are causing problems. Insurance costs are going up. Planned commercial expansions are being delayed.

The Illinois counties have pulled together, admirably, through a newly created Southwestern Illinois Prevention Council administered by Les Sterman, the former director of East-West Gateway who has long experience in major public works projects.

The council, in partnership with the Corps of Engineers, is collecting data to more completely define conditions and design solutions. Many practical details are expected to be available in January.
Project costs, once estimated by the Corps of Engineers at between $136 million to $180 million, now are seen as ranging between $300 million to $500 million. A comprehensive estimate, one that accounts for all contingencies, awaits more data from the field.

Illinois communities have approved a sales tax that’s expected to raise between $140 million to $198 million for the project. But it’s not their burden alone. Significant federal and regional help will be needed with support from business and political leaders on both sides of the river; the Metro East levee system must get higher priority on the Corps of Engineers’ long list of pending water projects.

In theory, there’s only one chance in 100 that floodwater will get high enough at any point in any year to pose a problem. But hydrologists say there have been seven such floods along the Mississippi in the last 100 years. St. Louis had one in 1993, and it came close in 2007. The $12 billion gamble is when — not if — the next one will come.