LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — The flooding threat is continued to move south Saturday with rising flood waters threatening a new town along the Missouri River.
The river's crest is higher than expected because of levee breaks for some towns like Leavenworth, which had to adjust on the fly to avoid catastrophe.
"When they raised (the crest) by another foot and a half, I said, 'That's a whole other game,'" Leavenworth Public Works Director Mike McDonald said.
It's not a game McDonald wants to play, but Mother Nature has left little choice
"It's real frustrating trying to plan with a forecast that is so fluid," he said.
Overnight Saturday, city crews filled sandbags to help combat the threat with the help of inmates from Lansing Correctional Facility.
Train tracks are covered, the Leavenworth Landing is submerged, and the Riverfront Community Center is now closed due to the flooding.
"Last night was our awards banquet, so we thought we would be in the green light the whole weekend and then just a few minutes ago unfortunately we had to be evacuated," said Holly Pittman, a First City Film Festival committee member.
The film festival was supposed to be inside the community center Saturday but now have to take an intermission and resume at other locations in downtown Leavenworth.
"We've got three different screens going and so we have to get the screens up, the projections up, the backing of the light so it can come through, and so moving that across the street is going to be a lot of work," Pittman said.
Flood waters also have reached the Leavenworth Wastewater Treatment Plant, where it has mixed with raw sewage spewing out of the facility. That forced a half-mile stretch of 2nd Street to close.
"They are pumping at absolute capacity at the Wastewater Treatment Plant and, because the water is so high and the pumps, the higher the water is means the less hard the pumps have to work," McDonald said. "So, they can actually pump more gallons the higher the water is and it overwhelms the portions of the treatment plant. It falls down to the water, it's all flooded at that part of the plant, there's three feet of water around it, and it gets in that water and it goes into the creek and down to the river."
Obviously, this isn't the first time the Missouri River has encroached on Leavenworth.
"I remember coming out here in '93 when I was a kid," Leavenworth resident Ryan Agnew said.
Now, he can show his kids what it means for a community to come together during a time like this similar to more than a quarter-century ago.
"It's just important to show that, 'Hey, this is part of Leavenworth; this happens sometimes, but people come out and help and it's going to be OK,'" Agnew said.
McDonald believes the levees will hold, but city officials are keeping a watchful eye for possible breaches this weekend.
