Michael Bushnell
Northeast News
Feb. 20, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — When noted Outdoors Writer Kenny Keiser teamed up with The Northeast News in 2013 to produce the book “Missouri’s Great Flood of 1993,” re-visiting an epic natural disaster, the thought was to provide an accurate accounting of the destruction the 1993 flood brought to the Missouri River Valley from the Iowa state line to the river’s confluence with the Mississippi River in St. Charles County.

The work is now is the subject of Missouri House Bill 793, filed by Democratic Rep. John Rizzo of Kansas City and co-sponsored by Republican Rep. Kevin Corlew. The bill, if passed by the legislature, would recognize Keiser’s book as the official document of history for the 1993 flood in the state of Missouri.

“We wanted to do something that would be a document of history and it looks as if it could come to fruition,” Keiser said.

The book spotlights the causes and effects of the great flood of 1993 in Missouri and draws on the expansive photo archives of the Missouri Department of Transportation, the United States Geological Survey and Keiser’s own photos taken during the flood for the Library of Congress. The bill notes Keiser as the author of the work and The Northeast News as the publishing entity.

House Bill 793 has been referred to the Trade and Tourism Committee and is scheduled for a hearing on Wednesday, February 25th. If the bill passes through the House, it would be signed by Gov. Jay Nixon and become law in August of this year.