Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 10, 1990 TAG: 9005100510
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Thousands of cattle were stranded and crops flooded out in Arkansas, where homeowners shot at joy-riding boaters roiling the water outside. In Texas, residents began returning to their damaged homes as the water receded.
Heavy rain and flooding in the past two weeks have claimed 13 lives, one in Oklahoma and the rest in Texas.
At a meeting with angry farmers in Ashdown, Ark., on Wednesday, Clinton said a task force should look at corps management of the Arkansas River, which runs diagonally across the state from the northwest, and the Red River, in the southwest.
Clinton later said state officials were talking with the corps to see if more water could be held in upstream reservoirs starting today to reduce flooding along the Red River.
Appearing on ABC's "Nightline" with Brig. Gen. Robert Lee, the regional corps commander, Clinton said southwestern Arkansas residents "feel that maybe the Corps could be holding some more water back. The levees have broken there in places, [and] in other places, there's no opportunity even to put the sandbags up."
If it proves impossible to hold some of the water at dams upstream, he said, "we're going to lose several thousand head of cattle and maybe the opportunity to plant rice and soybeans in this season."
Red River Valley farmers said the corps should have released more water from reservoirs during the winter.
"They hold the water when the water should be let out, and when they need to be able to hold the water in the spring when we have these big rains, they're turning it out," said Paul Hawkins, whose 3,000 acres were under water.
The area's wheat was three weeks from harvest, farmers said.
Lee defended the corps' procedures. If not for the corps' efforts, he said, "the water would be 8 feet deeper now than it is."
Diana Hinton, a trailer park owner, said Red River levees had been neglected and were unable to hold back floodwaters.
About 15,000 head of cattle were stranded in floodwaters with no way to get them to higher ground or to feed them, said Judge Clyde Wright, administrator of Little River County.
On the Texas side of the river, the state was using a helicopter to feed about 1,000 stranded cattle.
In Arkansas, Joe Brady of the Office of Emergency Services said damage to the state's roads and bridges was at least $10 million.
by CNB