Black Hawk County still seeking funds to repair bike trail bridge

Thu January 21 2010
Posted Jan 21, 2010
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La Porte City By Adam Belz adam.belz@gazcomm.com Black Hawk County needs help fixing a bicycle trail bridge over the Cedar River, but the most it will get from Linn County is probably a letter. The McFarlane Bridge between La Porte City and Brandon was closed after the June 2008 flood, disrupting the 52-mile Cedar Valley Nature Trail from Evansdale to Cedar Rapids. "With the bridge being out, the trail's been severed," Black Hawk County Supervisor John Miller said. "You can't go from Cedar Rapids to Waterloo unless you go nine miles out of the way." Replacing the bridge will cost about $3 million. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will only pay $96,000 toward the project because the old railroad bridge was already in bad shape when the flood hit, Miller said. "They didn't think the feds should have to put a new bridge in there when we were going to have to replace it anyway," Miller said. Miller is former director of FEMA Region VII. The I-Jobs board turned down an application from Black Hawk County for the money to pay for the project, and now county supervisors will have to see if they can get the project paid for in an earmark when they visit Washington D.C. in late February. Linn County Supervisors said they'd write a letter of support for the project, and offered county conservation officials to help work on the project. "We're very interested in getting that trail connected again," Dennis Goemaat, Linn County Conservation deputy director, said.