BY LESLIE HOLLOWAY
Imagine if someone proposed a public recreational trail across you
property — across your backyard and a thousand neighboring properties. You would probably expect, at the very least, to be notified and have an opportunity to discuss the idea with those who proposed it. Not so under the National Trails Act.

In Missouri, roughly 1,000 landowners in eight counties have been left out of the process while the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Ameren work out details for turning 145 miles of the unused Rock Island rail line into a recreational trail. Trail advocates based in Washington, D.C. have been in on the deal for months, while property owners are only now being brought into the conversation.

The federal law allows the railroad owner and any public or private entity willing to commit resources to preempt property owners’ rights specified in deeded easements protected by state law for the purpose of converting the railway to trail use — without notice to or input from property owners.

At an informational meeting organized by local Farm Bureau leaders recently, one concerned property owner summed it up this way, “Those who propose the trail have nothing to lose. Those along the trail have everything to lose.” Put another way, those with no skin in the game hold all the cards.

While proponents point to the KATY Trail to make the case for bicycle tourism and increased economic activity in communities along the rail, the DNR predicts the proposed trail would attract only a fraction of the visitors the KATY Trail does. At the same time, the proposed trail would cost landowners not only by restricting their access to and use of their property, but by increasing property and biosecurity risks due to pedestrian and bicycle traffic where it formerly did not exist.

The property owners can go to court seeking compensation under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which requires the federal government to provide just compensation for taking private property. If they succeed, some may be satisfied. Others would rather keep the privacy and security they now enjoy as property owners. Compensation to property owners in this case would pale in comparison to the cost taxpayers would shoulder in building and maintaining the trail.

Either way, those who propose the trail don’t have to worry. It’s no skin off their backs.

Leslie Holloway, of Jefferson City, Mo., is director of regulatory affairs affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.