It’s unclear whether the Midwest Continental Divide Trail project is dead or just severely injured. But farmers are vowing to drive a stake in its heart.
Last week county commissioners withdrew it from the county council’s next meeting agenda. The bill would have created a commission to start the project, conceived in a state law enacted last year to create a pedestrian eco-tourism path through the western part of the county.
At Tuesday’s county redevelopment commission meeting, farmer Chantelle Snyder sharply criticized South Bend, county and state elected officials, noting that the law allows private land to be taken for the project.
“I’m not willing to sell it," Snyder said. "No one’s approached me asking me to sell it. So how are they going to get this for their destination district? They’re going to take it via eminent domain. That’s not OK.”
Brent Burkus, owner of Blad Farms, urged commission members to read the enabling legislation. He said its references to “stakeholders” seems to ignore property rights.
”In the old days a stakeholder was the landowner," Burkus said. "Well now it appears the stakeholders seem to be the project managers in the attempts to ex-appropriate the land from the real stakeholders, OK, and we’re going to do our very best to stop it.”
County Commissioners President Carl Baxmeyer did not reply to our interview request.
