Missouri Bicycle News

Grantwood Village received a $30,000 payment from the federal government this week, for land that was part of a rail-to-trail conversion.

Property owners along Grant's Trail, the Katy Trail, and other rail-to-trail projects have sued the federal government for compensation. Grantwood Village was part of a class-action lawsuit that included many property owners along the Katy Trail in Missouri. Property owners won their suit; Grantwood Village is one of the first to actually receive payments from the federal government as a result of this lawsuit.

Grant's Trail is operated by TrailNet (which, incidentally, is looking to expand Grant's Trail). The Katy Trail is a Missouri State Park. Some have assumed that the large monetary awards related to the creation of these trails would have a devastating effect on the organizations that operate the trails. But the authority to create rail-to-trail conversions came from the federal Rails-to-Trails Act, and so the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the federal government--and not the local organizations or government bodies who may operate the trail--must pay any compensation due to adjoining landowners.

So far, Congress has felt that the value of maintaining the continuous right-of-way of the (former) railroads is well worth the payments involved. If the rights-of-way were allowed to disintegrate, the cost of re-assembling them would be many times greater than the court ordered payments will be.

Some groups representing property owners near rail right-of-ways, including the Farm Bureau, have fought long and hard, first to prevent rail-to-trail projects from moving forward and then, when court rulings made that impossible, to get property owners the compensation to which they felt entitled. The federal government, for its part, has fought the lawsuits brought by property owners tooth and nail.

The payments to Grantwood Village represent one of the first definite conclusions to any part of this hard-fought battle.

See STLToday's story on Grantwood Village here. permanent link to article: "St. Louis-area village receives payment for rail-to-trail conversion"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/25/2003 06:25:09 PM |comment on this article