Levee failure has water creeping into Texas town

[September 20, 2008]  PRESIDIO, Texas (AP) -- A levee protecting this western Texas border town from the swelling Rio Grande failed Thursday, and water was creeping toward populated areas of the town of about 5,000.

Gov. Rick Perry issued a disaster declaration and agreed to mobilize helicopters and inmates for a sandbagging operation aimed at turning railroad trestles into a makeshift dam.

"This situation poses an immediate danger to the residents of Presidio," Perry said in a statement.

The levee breach Thursday morning happened where water had been flowing over the top of the levee since at least Tuesday, Presidio County Attorney Rod Ponton said.

A golf course and farmland have been swamped, he said. Low-lying parts of the town remained under evacuation orders.

Perry authorized the use of five CH-47 helicopters, which Ponton said would be used to drop large sandbags around a railroad trestle. In addition, 170 prisoners from a low-security facility will throw smaller sandbags on two other trestles.

The help was to arrive Thursday evening, and Ponton said work would continue through the night. The helicopters were expected Friday morning.

Crews worked Thursday evening to push tons of dirt beneath one of the railroad trestles, where a steady stream of water was flowing out. They also worked to bolster a stretch of railroad track that forms a berm that abuts the levee nearby. Meanwhile, water was seeping beneath another trestle closer to the levee.

Ponton said a second levee failure is probable, however, and if that happens "all bets are off" on the trestle plan protecting the town.

"It won't be a wall of water, but it could be pretty fast," he said.

Presidio, across the Rio Grande from Ojinaga, Mexico, has been watching the river for two weeks. Heavy rains and the forced release of water from the flood-stricken Luis Leon Reservoir in Mexico into the Rio Conchos, which flows into the Rio Grande, filled the Rio Grande to the top of the levee.

In Ojinaga, hundreds of homes were flooded after the Rio Conche jumped its banks and the "El Granero" dam overflowed, said Isaac Olivas, director of the Chihuahua state Civil Protection. Floodwaters reached 13 feet in some parts of the town.

Olivas said 300 families had been evacuated over the weekend. There were no breaches in any dams on Mexico's side of the border, he said.

Ponton said Presidio officials asked Perry's office to contact the U.S. State Department and request that Mexico stop the release of water. As it stands, Ponton said he expects the release to continue for at least another week.

"This is not a natural disaster. It's a manmade disaster," he said, criticizing river management by Mexican officials.

The U.S. and Mexican leaders of the International Boundary and Water Commission and two others died in a plane crash on their way to check out the flooding. The wreckage was found Wednesday, two days after the plane disappeared.

[Associated Press; By ALICIA A. CALDWELL]

Associated Press writer Marina Montemayor in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, contributed to this report.

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