Friday the governor officially asked Ameren to hand over rights to the Rock Island Railroad corridor, the section on the western side of the Katy Trail that would connect the Katy to the Kansas City area, as partial compensation for the destruction caused to a state park by the failure of an Ameren-owned dam.
I believe Ameren is susceptible to public pressure and if we can get 1000 citizens or so to email them in support of the Complete Katy Trail it will be very hard for them to say "no". You can do it in two minutes here:
http://MoBikeFed.org/CompleteTheKaty
Having the governor and Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) get behind the Complete Katy Trail a really exciting development.
From the AP story that ran in the KCStar, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Belleville, IL, News-Democrat, and others:
Blunt's official statement is online here:Gov. Matt Blunt wants Ameren Corp. to give the state a mountain and let it use an old railroad as compensation for the Taum Sauk reservoir failure.
. . . he asked the departments of Natural Resources and Conservation and the attorney general to pursue some creative compensation options. Specifically, the governor suggests that Ameren could donate to the state Church Mountain, near Taum Sauk Mountain, and allow the state to use Ameren's section of an old Rock Island Railroad bed as part of the Katy Trail State Park.
"These very valuable properties hold great recreational potential for Missouri citizens," Blunt said in a written statement.
Katy Trail State Park already runs from the St. Louis area westward to Windsor, in west-central Missouri. Use of the old Rock Island line would allow the trail to be extended from Windsor to Pleasant Hill, an outer suburb of Kansas City, said the Department of Natural Resources.
http://www.gov.mo.gov/press/TaumSauk041406.htm