Sny Levee District

Map of the local area

We interviewed the superintendent of the Sny Levee Drainage District, Dean Paben. He discussed with us the purpose and configuration of the Sny Levee District, how they fought to save it during the flood of 1993, and what changes they would like to see for the future. The Sny was the the world's largest drainage district until two other drainages on the Mississippi combined together to form the Little Giant Drainage District.

Started back in the early 1800's the Sny Levee District now encompasses -

The Sny is divided into two districts: The Corps appoints four people who live within the Sny levee to administrate it. Sny maintains land side of levees and drainage structures. Corps only maintains the river side of the levee. The Sny is self-supported and does its own maintainance through financing by local taxes on property.

State and federal institutions do not pay taxes on property inside of the Sny Levee. Sny administators think they should be taxed because the levee protects governmental investments (roads, bridges, railways).

The levee was raised 8 feet to the 50 year flood level after the 1965 flood. The Sny was not flooded during last two major floods in 1965 and 1973.

In the Sny, saving the farm land during flood times is important because of the income tax derived from agriculture in the rich soils protected by the levees. The levee improvements have paid for themselves by protecting the rich farm land. The levees are also very important for navigation of the Mississippi River.

There were a total of nine breaks in the levee system, eight of which were man made breaks to get the water out of the levee. The big break was upstream from East Hannibal (upstream from Lock and Dam 22). 70,000 acres of district was kept dry (about two-thirds). The Sny was drained via gravity flow and also pumped it out with portable stations. The Sny was finally dewatered on Dec 8.

During the fight to save the levee, over 2 million sand bags, 30,000 rolls of picket fence, 80,000 bales of straw, and 45 bulldozers were used. There was an average of 2000-3000 people working on the levee at once, with a maximum of 6200 people.

The efforts to save the Sny began on 1 July by pushing up the sand levees to raise the levee heights. The administrators of the Sny really like working with sand levees because the sand be pushed up and formed during the event. Clay levees cannot be altered or worked on.

For 1993 flood there was a $37 million loss (only considers agricutlure, flood fight, building and property loss). This estimate does not include commerce loss, tranportation loss (highway and railways), damage to roads and bridges ($175,000/day for 40 days for quincy bridge), and unemployed people drawing unemployment. There are hopes to raise the Sny levee to a 500 year levee and build better bridges and railway embankments. To make 500 year levee it would cost 66 million. The current maintainance costs of $600,000 - $750,000/year would not change if we did build 500 year levee.

The flood was estimated to be a 660-680 year flood, but we think that by raising the levee to a 500 year flood that sand pushups would take care of the rest. It does not take much sand to hold back a lot of water, but you can only push sand up so far. If we had the 500 year flood, we could use push-ups to take care of floods much larger than that, but not with the current 50 year levee system.

It is hard for the supervisors of the Sny to make recommendations to the Corps for changes in the levee system because they have to go to Washington, DC to get things done. Who in DC is going to listen to the supervisors of the Sny? If we wanted to lay a rock riffraff along the riverside of the levee, it would take years to get the project approved.

The Corps have national mandates on how to deal with flood situations across the country, and what they don't realize is that every stretch of the drainage system is different and may need to be treated differently. They do not look at specifics of a site, just build to Coprs standards.


These pictures show where the levee broke. A large trench scoured by the raging flood waters was later filled in with sand from the eroding levee. The vertical erosion entrenched below the bottom of the levee removing the clay core. We like clay cores and clay levees because the water does not seep through and when the flood first starts you have other things to worry about. When the flood gets higher we like the sand levees because we can push them up higher and higher. We are not able to work with the clay levees like that. If you push up too much of the sand levee, it will weaken and become susceptible to erosion by rain. To protect it we layed 100x20 foot rolls of plastic weighted with sand bags. When the levee broke it started as a 10 foot hole, but soon widened to 3300 feet. This reach of the Sny (35,000 acres) filled in 18 hours.
PL-99 is a law that states the Corps must put back a levee to its original condition before the flood. This levee had a clay core that was eroded, but was replaced with levee made entirely of sand. The Corps says that it is just as good as a clay core levee, but if all these riverside levees in the Sny had been sand levees, we would have lost the whole thing. The combination of the clay cores and sand pushups saved us.

1000 hp diesel engines
Mud lines on diesel storage tanks next to levee
Mud lines on pump station
Outflow pipes that deliver the water from the pump station back to the river. Mississippi River to the left.
MPG showing area around levee and pump station.

The Sny District has 3 pump stations that can pump 1.3 million gallons a minute. The pumps are 84 inches in diameter and are powered with 1000 hp desile engines, each using 40 gallons of diesel fuel/hour. The water was up 10 feet on the motors before they were shut off. Each motor costs $500,000 each.

Usually we run the pump stations 24 hours a day for all of April, most of May, October, November and whenever we get a 1-2 inch thunderstorm. But in 1993, we ran the pumps from Feburary to December 8 and used over $1 million in diesel fuel.