$85K OK’d for levee work on southwestern Indiana levee

VINCENNES, Ind. (AP) – A southwestern Indiana commission has approved spending another $85,000 to raise a Wabash River levee to better protect the grounds of a federal memorial to Revolutionary War figure George Rogers Clark.

Vincennes levee superintendent Hunter Pinnell told the city’s redevelopment commission Thursday that the repairs went over budget because of unexpected work that needs to be done.

The Vincennes Sun-Commercial reports that the effort to raise the memorial’s south lawn hit a snag with the discovery that an 80-year-old, still-functioning copper underground sprinkler system was more extensive than originally thought.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers won’t allow a sprinkler system so close to the levee, so that portion will have to be removed and the existing infrastructure redesigned and modified.