Katy Bridge at Boonville disputed by state government leaders

Doyle Childers, head of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon are have a disagreement about the status of the Katy Bridge at Boonville, according to an article in the Columbia Daily Tribune. The Katy Bridge was used by the Katy Railroad to cross the Missouri River at Boonville. Now that the Katy corridor has been converted to trail use, trail users cross the Missouri on a nearby highway bridge.

Boonville area residents want to convert the Katy Bridge for bike/ped use and feel it will be a tourist attraction for the area. The Union Pacific Railroad wants to move most of the bridge to another location where it can be put to work as a railroad bridge.

A further complication is the fact that some legal experts believe that removing the Katy Bridge could endanger the status of the entire Katy Trail--because of the original agreement that led to the creation of the trail, and because of the nuances of federal law that allow the trail to be built on this "railbanked" corridor.

The Daily Tribune article says in part:

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon said yesterday the old steel trestle is protected under an Interim Trails Agreement between the state and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, signed in 1987. He vowed to fight Blunt’s decision to give away the Boonville bridge and questioned why Doyle Childers, the director of the Department of Natural Resources, would willingly support a plan to relinquish - without just compensation - a valuable state asset.

"I have an obligation to protect the state’s assets," Nixon said.

Childers countered that Nixon doesn’t understand the state’s current budget challenges and questioned why the attorney general would support a plan that he said could cost the state millions of dollars to refurbish an old bridge.

Read the rest of this complex story in the Daily Tribune here.

Missourinet also covered this dispute.

Background on this story is here.