June 17 (Bloomberg) -- The rising Mississippi River is threatening to inundate cities along more than 300 miles of the nation's main commercial waterway as floods that ravaged Iowa and caused billions of dollars of damage head downstream.

The National Weather Service issued at least 10 flood warnings for cities along the Mississippi in Illinois and Missouri. The warnings cover a span of about 325 miles (523 kilometers) from Dubuque, Iowa, where the river is forecast to stay above flood levels until June 20, south to St. Louis, where moderate flooding is taking place. U.S. President George W. Bush will visit Iowa on June 19.

``You can't control the Mississippi River,'' said John Spring, 60, mayor of Quincy, Illinois, a city of about 40,000. ``I have lived on it my whole life; I know the river always wins.'' Floods shut one of the city's two bridges over the waterway, he said.

Flooding and storms in the Midwest killed 17 people since May 25, caused more than 10,000 Iowa residents to apply for aid and drove the price of corn to a record high. The cost to Iowa's agricultural economy may exceed $2 billion, according to one estimate. The floods halted several Amtrak routes.

The Mississippi is causing record flooding at Burlington, Iowa, 211 miles north of St. Louis, with the river rising another 1.4 feet (0.4 meters) by June 19 to 25.8 feet, about 10 feet above flood stage, the National Weather Service said.

Levee Breaks

The city of about 27,000 people caught a break when a levee broke across the river near Carthage Lake in Illinois, causing the Mississippi at Burlington to fall by 9 inches (22.9 centimeters).

``While it is not good for Illinois people, it did help our cause,'' Burlington Mayor William Ell said in a phone interview. The city's drinking water supply is safe, he said.

The government predicts 27 levees may overflow along the Mississippi should sandbags fail, the Associated Press reported.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., the second-largest U.S. railroad, has closed parts of lines through southern Iowa and along the Mississippi north and south of St. Louis, said Steve Forsberg, a spokesman for the Fort Worth, Texas-based company.

Rerouting is causing delays of as much as 24 hours for freight shipments from Chicago to Denver, and has delayed shipments into and out of St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee, for as much as 36 hours, he said.

Iowa Rails

Union Pacific Corp.'s main east-west line in central Iowa is getting back into operation now that floods are receding there, company spokesman Mark Davis said in a telephone interview. The route across Iowa is open except for a bridge near Cedar Rapids, which Omaha, Nebraska-based Union Pacific, the largest U.S. railroad, expects to reopen tomorrow.

``The first task at hand is to deal with the floodwaters, to anticipate where the flooding may next occur and to work with the state and local authorities to deal with the government response,'' Bush told reporters following a briefing on the flooding at the White House today.

The cost to Iowa's agricultural economy may reach $2.7 billion, according to economics professors Mark Burton at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and Michael Hicks at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

The estimate may wind up being low, Hicks said.

``It's flat out there and when the water goes out it goes everywhere,'' Hicks said. ``The impacts are going to rise into the billions of dollars additionally.''

Corn and Soybeans

Corn for December delivery reached a record high $7.915 a bushel yesterday. Soybean futures rose to $15.53 a bushel today, approaching a record high of $15.865 set on March 3.

At St. Louis, Missouri's second-largest city, the deluge probably won't rival damage from floods in 1993, Alan Dooley, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers St. Louis District, said by telephone.

Unlike 1993, neither the Missouri nor Illinois rivers is flooding.

The Mississippi, the second-longest river in the U.S., carries about 282 million metric tons of freight annually, according to Encarta encyclopedia.

The river gauge at St. Louis will climb to 40.2 feet on June 23, from 35.8 today, according to the National Weather Service. While 10 feet above flood stage, the peak will be almost 10 feet below the 1993 record. At its crest the water would flow over the Choteau Island Levee, which protects 2,400 acres of land, the National Weather Service said.

Amtrak Disrupted

``It is serious flooding,'' Dooley said. ``But it isn't anywhere near 1993,'' Dooley said.

In Iowa, parts of which received more than 10 inches of rain in the past 14 days, some rivers have crested, while still threatening downtown areas.

Amtrak, the national passenger railroad, said in a statement that it halted service on its California Zephyr route between Chicago and Denver; its Empire Builder line between Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota; and its Southwest Chief route between Chicago and Kansas City because of the flooding.

The railway is offering rides on chartered buses and other rail lines, although flooding makes it ``impossible'' to supply alternate transportation in some cases, the statement said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net; Robin Stringer in New York at rstringer@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 17, 2008 17:03 EDT