Wappapello road plan makes no sense

To the Editor,

MoDOT explains in a handout for the March 5 meeting from 4 to 6 pm at the Bill Emerson Visitor's Center at Lake Wappapello that the U.S. Corps of Engineers will not allow them to "encroach" on the NO BUILD ZONE. This means no bridge, but a crossing of the washout that is even below the current temporary road. It appears from looking at the proposal that it will be lower than the washed out road was, but higher than the temporary road. No details about how the water is to pass under this road, but one could guess probably large box culverts.

A bridge would require abutments on either side of the current washout, possibly one bridge piling in the middle, but for all practical purposes a very short bridge over the currently washed out area. At the public meeting in September, that is what the public wanted. Supposedly FEMA has made available to MoDOT enough money to build a bridge.

I suspect the Corps is going to put some kind of interpretative trail in there, but I cannot imagine that one bridge piling would keep that from happening.

The handout does not answer how the traffic coming up out of the parking area in the lower spillway parking lot is going to access Hwy T. Is the through Highway T going to have to stop for the spillway traffic as it does currently on the temporary road?

Needless to say, anyone looking at where the Corps of Engineers is going to allow MoDOT to build the new replacement road makes one wonder about the common sense being displayed by the engineers in the St. Louis Corps office.

As an aside, MoDOT has already staked out with survey markers where the new road will go, they have been in there taking core samples of the ground underneath the proposed road bed--so to an interested resident it appears that this is set in stone.

As a resident of Wappapello, I can see no logic in re-routing this road that far off its original path, just to accommodate whatever future plans the Corps has for the area. This is our main highway to places south and west, like Springfield, Mo. The residents work in Poplar Bluff and Dexter, go to college at Three Rivers College, shop in Poplar Bluff and Dexter's shopping centers, our main road to begin to travel anywhere. Why this big detour makes no sense.

Anita Lichtenegger

Wappapello, Mo.