LETTER: Many reasons to question paving of the Luce Line Trail

From Greg Graczyk
Silver Lake
I apologize for being late with this, but just wanted to add a couple of comments to the Luce Line Trail articles that were written in the April 3 edition of the Hutchinson Leader. I realize that it is impossible to put all the discussion topics that took place at the March 31 meeting in Silver Lake in the paper, but I feel that there are some points that were not covered and/or need further clarification.
Revenue generated by the Root River Trail and Paul Bunyan Trail was brought up in the presentation. These areas are completely different than the Cedar Mills to Winsted area so to try to compare revenue numbers is just not feasible.
The Gateway Trail was brought up in the above stated articles in regard to revenue as well. It is stated that this trail is “used less by out-of-town tourists,” meaning more local use or local dollars spent. This is probably true, but let’s take a closer look at the Gateway Trail as many readers probably don’t know anything about it.
Communities that are stated to be in association with this trail are St. Paul, Maplewood, Oakdale, North St. Paul, Mahtomedi, etc. It is obvious that the local population around this trail is not comparable to the population around the Luce Line Trail. In other words, even though the Gateway Trail and the proposal for the Luce Line Trail may have more closely related users, the two areas are still very, very, different.
As in earlier meetings, agricultural access and maintenance issues came up. Mr. Mitchell with the DNR did state that crossing locations would be addressed. It was brought up however that with land ownership, land usage and general landscape changes the term “crossings,” as used in Sen. Dille’s bill, is not adequate to accommodate access needs by agricultural producers.
Mr. Mitchell also tackled the question of agricultural tile line repair issues.