Even though the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau is falling, water on the Illinois side continues to rise.
The Illinois Department of Transportation has closed Route 3 from McClure south and Highway 146 in East Cape Girardeau.
John Osterhage with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the high water in Alexander County comes from two different sources and simply has nowhere to go.
"It's obviously surface water, whenever it rains, that water that falls within the area protected by the levee sort of becomes trapped in there. The other source is seep water, water that either seeps through the levee or up under it from the floodwaters."
He says normally this water would drain out, but it can't right now because of the river flooding.
"Since we've been at elevated river stages for so long, when the water comes up you have to close gates to keep the river from back flooding into those culverts. Then, with the gates closed obviously, the water can't drain out by gravity and so it starts backing up inside the protected area."
He says the high water in Alexander County will hang around for a while.
"You to get to a stage where the river is lower than the water on the interior before you can open those gates. Otherwise, you're just making matters worse because water would flow back in. "There's still that pressure going down through the aquifer, forcing water to come up. So, even with it dropping on the exterior, you're kind of just accumulating water in the interior with no place for it to go."
