ALEXANDER COUNTY (WSIL) -- People in parts of Southern Illinois are again feeling the effect of river flooding, especially in Alexander County.
County Engineer Jeff Denny says his crew has been trying their best to repair roads damaged by flood water. "We've got some roads we really haven't messed with yet because the water it got down for a little bit, and then it came back up. It's kind of been this recurring cycle."
He says a breach in the Len Small levee is causing repeated problems.
"…it's just the water comes in at such a low level now, it's just like you almost have continual flooding down there."
Residents, like the owner of Horseshoe Bar and Grill, Sherry Pecord, say it needs to be fixed.
"We need help, and we need the corps to fix the levee, bottom line, and I don't know what has to happen to make that happen. When the barges got sucked in through the breach we thought this is our ticket, because they always said if it changed the navigational flow of the river, that's when they would do something, because it affected the bigger picture. Well that happened, three sets of boats have been sucked through that hole."
Denny says, "There's nothing concrete at this point, the corps still has no interest in working with us or assisting us, so it's just, it's pretty frustrating."
Pecord says while the flooding is impacting her job, home, and farm, she can't leave.
"It aggravates me to no end for people to say well why don't you just move? Okay, but why don't you just move? What if I said hey why don't you just move? Leave your house, leave everything you've got, go somewhere, buy a new house, start over. You know you can't do that, and who's going to buy a house down here? Nobody. "
She just wants her livelihood protected by the levee like it once was. "Life was good before the levee broke, I mean we didn't have these problems."
Denny adds, "…basically all we're doing is make repairs to get it back to as good, or sometimes not even as good as it was previously. So yeah, the whole cyclye is pretty frustrating."
He says until the levee is fixed, they won't make much progress in repairing roads.
