By STEVE BINDER
Illinois Correspondent

CHARLESTON, Mo. — A group of Missouri Bootheel farmers last week filed a lawsuit the morning after federal officials blew up a portion of a levee that flooded nearly 130,000 acres of farmland.

Lawmakers and farmers were unsuccessful in preventing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from breaching the Birds Point levee, petitioning all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. When the court refused to hear the case, the Corps breached the levee to relieve pressure on upstream communities, particularly Cairo, Ill.

Missouri Farmer Lester Goodin said he joined the group primarily to ensure that he would be able to rebuild once the flood waters recede.

The lawsuit alleges the federal government violated farmers’ property rights as it relates to the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, referring to the act of the government making use of private property without due process. It claims federal authorities didn’t have all the easements within the affected 35-mile floodway to allow them to blow up the levee.

“In the process of breaching the levee, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also destroyed, or is in the process of destroying, 90 households and more than 100,000 acres of the country’s richest farmland,” said attorney J. Michael Ponder of Cook, Barkett, Ponder & Wolz in Cape Girardeau, Mo., in a statement last week.

“This occurred despite the fact that the Corps lacked the easement over the affected property in the floodway. What these property owners and farmers are seeking is just compensation for the land and livelihood they have lost – possibly forever or for decades.”

Farmers are claiming the levee breach violated the clause of the Fifth Amendment which prevents the taking of land without due process.
Army Corps spokesman Jim Pogue declined comment regarding the lawsuit, but previously he had noted the Corps has retained easements since the levee system was put in place after the great flood of 1927.

The farmers’ co-counsel, Washington, D.C.-based Benjamin D. Brown, said the levee’s breach sent water flowing in the floodway at destructive rates.
“The river was allowed to scour away large sections of land, which will leave huge holes, silt and deposits of sand and gravel on formerly productive cropland,” he said. “This land may never recover from this destruction.”
At the time the levee was breached (May 2), acreage in the affected area was selling for between $4,000-$6,000 an acre, according to the attorneys. Corn prices were about $6.75 a bushel and the land produced approximately 200 bushels an acre in-season.

Wheat was selling for between $8-$9 a bushel and the land was producing about 75 bushels an acre, and soybeans were selling for between $12-$14 a bushel and the land produced about 70-75 bushels an acre in-season.