By Chris Taylor
Paducah, KY – Despite work to protect Paducah's Julian Carroll Convention and Paducah-McCracken County Expo centers from flood waters, city officials are giving up the effort. The city hired a construction company last week to extend a temporary levee around the buildings located outside Paducah's floodwall. That temporary levee used to debris left from the demolition of the Executive Inn, but only protects to a level of 53 and a half feet. Crest projections put the Ohio River at 55 and a half feet by Thursday. When the decision was made yesterday, those projections were three feet higher. City engineer Rick Murphy tells the Paducah Sun the temporary levee could have been built higher, to protect from a 55 foot crest, but the current predictions would still have put that some six inches too short.