Mayor John Nations against Chesterfield

From the Post-Dispatch: Chesterfield mayor on the front lines of Highway 141

Nations, you don't get it. Residents don't want the project stopped. What they want is due process.

Building a 6-lane elevated highway on top of and through high-quality wetlands, demolishing a homestead that's eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, blowing off warnings from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, not conducting an Environmental Impact Study, beginning work without permits and without all right-of-way acquisitions completed, spending much, much more money than is necessary ($72 MILLION FOR FIVE MILES) ----- this is absolutely irresponsible, Mayor.

Farm Aid to take place on threatened farm land!

Help us out here, Willie Nelson.

"Farm Aid has deep roots in the Midwest that reach back to our first concert in Illinois in 1985," said Farm Aid president Willie Nelson. "I'm looking forward to bringing my friends together on the Farm Aid stage to celebrate family farmers and the crucial work they do. Farmers do so much more than bring us the good food we all want to eat. America needs family farmers to revitalize our economy and make our country healthy."

We're so struck with the irony of this year's Farm Aid being held on farm land that's being targeted for commercial development. The Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre sits in the midst of some of the most fertile land in America, which St. Louis County plans to run a superhighway through, followed closely by the destruction of every farm there.

"Completing the Page to Olive Connector will improve access to the Howard Bend area. Various studies have indicated the economic benefit of construction, sales, wages and other elements could be as high as 20 billion dollars over twenty years. The economic benefit will extend throughout the region and the state." ~from St. Louis County's Page-Olive Connector website.

We'll be right there with you on October 4th, Mr. Nelson. Will you be with us?

St. Louis County issued a project RFQ yesterday, indicating that they anticipate receipt of a signed Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) in mid-July. Signing of the FONSI to be done by MoDOT and FHWA.

Thus far, our pleas for an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) are going ignored.

Please send your concerns as soon as possible to FHWA: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/modiv/roster.htm and MoDOT's mailto:Karen.Yeomans@modot.mo.gov

Mill Ridge conversation

Chatted with a woman who lives in Mill Ridge this evening. She said she was told by the owner of that development that the County was going to build the Page-Olive Connector where existing Creve Coeur Mill Road lies and would be removing a few of the development's buildings closest to that road. She was unaware, as well as distressed to learn, that the County instead plans to build behind her development. She didn't think other residents in her development knew this either. She indicated that she, as well as some of her neighbors, would sign the petition demanding an EIS.

We need to inform these people what the truth is.

St. Louis County doesn't need a 'Road to Nowhere'

Letter to the Editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, published 6/19/09

We are taxpayers and residents in West County, where St. Louis County and the Missouri Department of Transportation plan a new highway of four to six lanes from Ladue Road to the Maryland Heights Expressway. A recent editorial ripped the cover off the fiction that these two 1.7-mile road projects ever had anything to do with congestion. This is greed and laziness, plain and simple. Congratulations for accurate insight on the "Road to Nowhere."

It is the duty of MoDOT, St. Louis County traffic and our elected officials to watch out for our communities and support projects that maintain or increase our quality of life, not just fill the county coffers with money. Without even looking at other options to fix the problems along Woods Mill Road and Highway 141, they are expecting us to agree to having our homes, communities and green space blitzed for the roads; fork over $34 million per mile of new elevated road and two tunnels that do not have adequate, current environmental or financial analysis; and, inevitably, provide tax subsidies for their future "Mosquito Marsh Mall" down in the flood plains along Creve Coeur Mill Road and Maryland Heights Expressway.

In short, they want us to pay for their "progress" and build the road to it too.

Soon after, they'll expect a bailout when it inevitably floods and the "For Lease" signs overwhelm them. Why don't they just send us all an invoice and be done with it? Encourage re-development rather than new development; this would save money and local farms and showcase us as leaders of responsible development rather than government waste. We hope all readers who have had enough of irresponsible development will protest directly to St. Louis County and their own community city hall. Complain like a paying customer; that's what you are.

MoDot intends to extend highway 141 from Ladue road to the Page extension in west St. Louis county. The purpose of this extension is to encourage commercial development of land owned by the cities of Maryland Heights, Creve Coeur, and Chesterfield. MoDot's motivation for expansion is jobs for their people and increased tax revenue for the cities. The city's hope is that nonexistent businesses will want to locate in a flood plain in the very part of the country with the highest rate of economic decline.

Their traffic model constraints, variables, and assumptions are a joke.

Some development of highway 141 may be needed to alleviate traffic congestion, but MoDot has produced a massive, wasteful plan for highway expansion that will misuse 65 million dollars of taxpayer money.

There is a glut of available commercial real estate and high unemployment in St Louis.

Job losses in the automotive and aerospace industries have had a substantial and long lasting affect on the St. Louis economy. Those jobs are gone. They aren't coming back. There are no industries with the potential to replace those lost jobs in the near term.

St. Louisans are furious that money is being spent to create a massive west county outer loop that will do no more than destroy what little remains of the wetland and wildlife corridors in the area.

Why can't a more reasonable highway extension be built with less cost incurred? Why can't some of this money be put to good use creating jobs for the region? Many people in the area realize St. Louis is a great rear view mirror city. They are leaving for Texas, the east coast, even overseas. Work has already begun on this massive waste of taxpayer funds. St. Louisans watched half of the city of Bridgeton get wiped off the map to add a runway to Lambert airport when a runway was not needed. When will we ever learn?