By BRENT MARTIN
Northern Missouri Congressman Sam Graves says the national Rails to Trails movement has broken the promise made to landowners when the railroads first purchased the rights of way to lay track.
Graves sponsors legislation that would require property owners be compensated when adjoining railroad rights of way are turned into trails. Graves says too few trails have properly compensated the landowner and too many have failed to property maintain the land.
“If they do put in a trail and they do compensate landowners, then I believe that they also ought to maintain that property and we have seen that become a very big problem, if the property is not being properly maintained,” Graves tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “And so, what this does is ensure that it is if it does become a trail.”
Graves sponsors the Rails to Trails Landowner Rights Act. Rails to Trails allows the federal government to hand over former railroad corridors to be converted into trails.
Graves says the federal law runs roughshod over the original agreements between railroads and landowners, which promised the land would revert back to the property owner if the railway is abandoned.
“I think if the land does not revert back to the landowner or the family, whatever the case may be, then they should be compensated for it,” Graves says. “That’s the bottom line.”
Another provision in Graves’ legislation would require trails to be maintained as they had been by the railroads. Graves says he has heard complaints from landowners about weeds and trash along the trails.
Graves says it doesn’t matter if the legislation would hamper the Rails to Trails movement.
“There’s nothing that is more frustrating than having a farm that a railroad went through and you basically cut it in half and then have the railroad go out and you can’t get that land back when your agreement stated that it was to revert back to you,” according to Graves. “That is a very frustrating component of this and I hope it hampers it.”
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