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Crews had spent all of Saturday sandbagging the riverside Missouri-American Water Co. plant, but when the Missouri River crested at 33 feet -- flood stage is 17 feet -- water came over the plant's levee, said company spokeswoman Kristi Sinn.

In Illinois, the Mississippi breached the smaller section of two sections of the Sny Island levee, 10 miles south of Quincy. The break in the 52-mile-long soaked-clay berm, the second-longest river levee in the nation, flooded 44,000 acres of prime farmland along the western bank of the river in Pike County, Ill.

Some 125 miles to the south, officials evacuated nearly 2,000 residents for fear three levees would give way. They essentially surrendered one levee protecting Valmeyer, Ill., and some 70,000 acres of farmland because of water boiling through the structure.