Corps Blasts Through Missouri Levee

The Army Corps of Engineers lit up the Missouri skyline last night, blowing a two-mile gap in a levee, and activating a 1920s flood plan that has not been used since 1937. The explosions along the levee near drenched Cairo caused water to gush over prime farmland, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Missouri had contested the plan, but the US Supreme Court rejected its request to halt the demolition on Sunday. Though bad for farmers, the plan is meant to protect nearby towns by lowering water levels where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi. One nearby farmer says, after the water moves through, he will plant crops even though his land will not be protected by a levee. "We're farmers," he says. "We're used to gambling." (More Missouri stories.)