Katy Trail to KC – Not Likely

Ken Midkiff

Not so fast. As usual, the devil is in the details and the details in the proposed Settlement Agreement (between the State and AmerenUE over the Taum Sauk Reservoir collapse) bode ill for any extension of the KATY Trail to the Kansas City area.

Consider:

1.The Rock Island Line - that AmerenUE does NOT own - was never "abandoned" and is therefore ineligible for the Rails to Trails designation.

Deal with Ameren UE sells out protection of Church Mountain

As Reynolds County citizens and as leaders of the East Ozarks Audubon
Society, the area's largest environmental organization, we are dismayed
by the settlement terms between the state of Missouri and AmerenUE over
Ameren's failed Taum Sauk reservoir.

Comments are due by December 27 for the settlement over the Taum Sauk reservoir. Read about it here.

(This is reposted from the Missouri Parks Association)

The state's $180 million settlement with Ameren over the Taum Sauk Reservoir collapse announced November 28 may sound like a good deal. But unfortunately, in the view of MPA leaders, it is a sell-out to Ameren. It does nothing to protect Church Mountain, the most critically threatened resource in the midst of the Taum Sauk complex of state-owned wild lands, but instead ties the state to a highly dubious "license" to construct a link part-way to Kansas City for the cross-state Katy Trail.