Taum Sauk Board Seeks Directors

By St. Louis Business Journal

The Taum Sauk board will have three vacancies Dec. 31.

The board’s mission is to oversee efforts to restore tourism and economic development in the areas of Missouri hurt by the December 2005 breach of Ameren’s Taum Sauk reservoir.

Applications for the board seats are found online. Experience with economic development and tourism is preferred.

This past spring, Ameren’s Taum Sauk hydroelectric plant started generating electricity again after four years of rebuilding and $490 million in construction following the reservoir’s catastrophic breach in 2005 that sent a 20-foot-high wall of water cascading through Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park.

The breach in 2005 was called Missouri’s worst man-made disaster. The flood injured the park superintendent and his family, damaged the east fork of the Black River and scarred a 6,000-foot-long section of the mountainside. An investigation by regulators found that water-level sensors had been placed too high to work so the reservoir filled up and water spilled over the top, eroding the dam.

In late 2007, Ameren agreed to pay the state of Missouri nearly $180 million to rebuild Johnson’s Shut-Ins, including $52 million to execute the park’s master redevelopment plan.

Ameren Missouri, led by President and Chief Executive Warner Baxter, is part of St. Louis-based Ameren Corp. (NYSE: AEE), which supplies 2.4 million electric customers and nearly 1 million natural gas customers in Missouri and Illinois.

Copyright 2010 American City Business Journals

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