Judge gives corps OK to break levee; Mo. appeals

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — The state of Missouri has appealed a federal judge's ruling giving the Army Corps of Engineers the go-ahead to break a Mississippi River levee and flood Missouri farmland if the agency deems it necessary to spare a flood-threatened Illinois town upstream.

On Friday, a day after hearing five hours of testimony, U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. found the corps' plan to breach the Birds Point levee appropriate to ensure navigation and flood-control along the Mississippi. A short time later, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster appealed to the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.

The corps has proposed using explosives to blow a 2-mile-wide hole through the levee in southeast Missouri's Mississippi County, arguably to ease waters rising around the upstream town of Cairo, Ill., near the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.