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Reply to Machens Extension now delayed due to soft levees


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Reply to Machens Extension now delayed due to soft levees
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the_clausenator from St Chuck County on 10/9/2008 11:38:02 AM:
Article noted by my son in today's (10/09/08) St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Eastern Katy Trail Extension won't be open this Fall
By Tim Bryant

ST. CHARLES COUNTY — Cyclists and hikers who had hoped to do some leaf peeping this fall on the new eastern tip of the Katy Trail will be disappointed.

State parks officials wanted to have the trail's easternmost 11 miles open this fall. But waves of summer showers softened the levee over which dump trucks loaded with gravel must operate to complete the trail project.

Quinn Kellner, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' superintendent for the trail's eastern section, was unable to say when the job will get under way but said the project will take about three months once it starts.

He said the work will begin when the levee becomes dry enough to remain undamaged while bearing heavily loaded trucks.

"We need to allow for some pretty dry conditions to set up before they haul rock," he said. (Paragraph cut out here)

About $350,000 in state funding for the work came through in July. Katy Trail State Park officials had hoped to do the work last year, but funding was not finalized.

Pushing the trail to Machens has been a department goal for years, but the floods of 1993 and 1995 delayed completion. Floods created two large areas of standing water on the trail.

One of the areas, a 600-foot expanse called a scour hole, presented too costly an obstacle for a bridge. The state then pursued the option of putting part of the trail on a levee maintained by the Consolidated North County Levee District.

(More on alternate levee path details removed here - see online Post for full content and pictures as well)