Roy Blunt: “Missouri has withstood a number of tremendous natural disasters this spring. In fact, the flood our good friend from…”

“Missouri has withstood a number of tremendous natural disasters this spring. In fact, the flood our good friend from Montana just talked about is headed down the Missouri River from Montana, to the Dakotas, to Missouri right now. We have had floods along the Mississippi. We have had floods of the Black River that required the evacuation of part of Poplar Bluff, MO. We have had tornadoes in both St. Louis and Joplin and now, as I said, the Missouri River floods. The Missouri River flood is beginning to reflect what has happened upstream with the above-normal snowpack that we do not see much of, but we see it when it melts in the spring. And high rainfall amounts this spring have made the difference in what is happening in our State. The flooding along the Missouri River, which is about to get to crisis stage, will now join floods along the Mississippi River, the Black River, and tornadoes in St. Louis and Joplin. River levels are expected to rise near record levels and remain there until early or mid-August. This, of course, will put a tremendous pressure on our levee system. The estimates I heard this week were that between now and 2 weeks from today, there will be at least two dozen levees underwater, which means the water will have gotten high enough to come over the tops of these levees, and maybe over 50 levees on the Missouri River before it gets to St. Louis will be underwater and will have water on both sides of them until well into the summer.…”