Conflicting Claims and Interests
I attended a meeting of the River Valley District last night in Arcadia. This is an organization that is trying to bring the interest of the tourist business in Lesterville and those in Arcadia Valley, Calidonia, and Annapolis together.
One person asked when Ameren was going to start the process of spending the FERC fine money and who was going to benefit. We also have the Missouri settlement with Ameren to look forward to. Gov. Blunt keeps talking about how all the citizens of Missouri suffered a loss because of what happened to the Shut-Ins. I'm not sure what percentage of the citizens even know what the Shut-Ins are, much less where in the state they are located. I was surprised this summer at how few people expressed any sense of loss. Most people had two comments, they wanted to know if the rocks in the actual shut-in were OK and they thought it was a miricle that the superintends family survived.
I bring this up because of the following link. There is a push to get some land that Ameren ownes near Kansas City to help complete the Katy Trail. I doubt that many folks in the River Valley area care much about this and if it dilutes the effort to restore the tourism business here it will not be received kindly. While I have written that the pottery did just fine this past summer, the more I talk with other businesses the more I hear how tough this past summer was. I talked with one B & B owner that felt that they spent an additional $20,000 to attract the same business as 2005. So many folks are still hot under the collar about the events of last December. Stay tuned.
posted by staff @ 8:14 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I think the money should be used for the area that was affected. No monies should be spent in any other area. Your area deserves it and should get it!!
Kris
Lee,
Thanks so much for your daily info.
Great Work!
How did the folks do at BRL this past summer? Was their business up or down from past years?
My guess that Linda, Gil, Laurie & Susan didn't feel any pinch..
Am I right? Our week was certainly full!!
I live in Franklin County, which is about a 2 hour drive to the state park. It wouldn't feel like summer without a trip to the shut-ins and we have been doing it for over 20 years. I feel it is a very popular and well known park, but only to people that like to do the type of activities that parks offer. Many people do not know about the awesome state park system in MO, nor do they care where the money is spent. I would prefer a new state park at Church Mountain and improvements at other goverment owned recreation areas in the Arcadia Valley and Lesterville area instead of the Katy Trail extension.
Many thanks to keeping those of us that do know and care about the shut-ins, so well informed.
Well, Lee it looks like your feeding frenzy has begun. This doesn't surprise me though. The best bait for catching political fish has always been hard Yankee dollars! Perhaps our good Gov. Blunt is looking to fill his vote vault for 2008.
If we are going to make a land grab anywhere, let's get Ameren off of Church Mountain for keeps. They shouldn't be rewarded for poor stewardship of their resources by being allowed to repeat the process elsewhere.
For the curious, Ameren makes it possible for me to see the keyboard, so I will most likely be paying for my opinions one way or another.
I personally don't see how a section of the Katy trail in Kansas City is ever going to be of any benefit to the Black River area. I have some R&R woods a few miles south of Lesterville. A round trip for me is 192 miles. The nearest portion of the Katy Trail as about 20 Miles in the opposite direction. I don't envision too many people making that trip. On trips to visit family to the North we usually don't see many people using the trail, many times no one at all. And this a mere 40 miles or so from St. Louis.
I say the money should be used locally, that is where the damage was done. Let the area business owners and residents work this out. Keep the State Capitol crowd out of it, they have plenty of other things to be working on. I think I'm done for now.
I live in St. Charles now, but I am originally from Jefferson County and spend a lot of time in the Fredericktown/Ironton area kayaking on the St. Francis.
My idea of what they should build with a small part of the money that I sent when the DNR was asking for comments is this.
Already lots of geology students come every spring and go see Taum Sauk, Silver Mines, and Johnson's Shutins. Lots of these kids are really engineering students taking geology because they get to go on cool field trips.
They need to build an Engineering Disaster Museum. Ideally build it within walking distance of the actual destruction. It would feature exhibits on how they managed to pump the water over the reservoir wall and then also have exhibits about other engineering screwups like the Teton dam, New Orleans levees, etc etc.
I think combined with the geology, it would attract a lot people (money) and maybe help the engineers of the future not be screwups.
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