Butler County Engineer Greg Wilkens recently told county commissioners his office needs access to a federal agricultural easement, or five acres of land, to build a new road that would run parallel to the train tracks, but they may have to sue the farmer to get it.
“it’s going to be expensive, I mean that goes all the way up to the Supreme Court when you get into that type of litigation,” Wilkens said.
More than four years ago, a group of Cedar Grove residents petitioned the commissioners asking for help. Back then, Pam Stroup, spokeswoman for the residents, told the commissioners there have been medical emergencies where life squads couldn’t get in or residents seeking help couldn’t get out. There are 215 homes in the subdivision and last year she said since 2021 trains have blocked the roads 70 times for more than 40 hours.
Normally, if a property owner won’t willingly part with their land for public improvements, Wilkens can file an eminent domain action in court and force the sale. But Wilkens said the federal agricultural easement appears to trump local eminent domain authority.
“In our typical realm we just use eminent domain and then we settle the monetary cost and pay the farmer, that’s what we do throughout, but this agricultural easement changes all that,” Wilkens said. “We’re trying to see how much it changes it and what’s the path forward if there is one.”
County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser told the Journal-News they are getting help from outside counsel with this issue to see how they can proceed with this “potential deadly problem.”
“We would hope that we would get the cooperation of property owners along these railroad easements to help us out,” he said. “But everybody has their own rights to the issues and those may have to be decided and litigated in a courtroom.”
Wilkens wouldn’t divulge the name of the farmer who is fighting them on this.
At the outset, the residents were offered four options to open access and Wilkens estimated the cost for each, that ranged from $60.3 million to build two bridges over Four Mile Creek to $2 million to build a new access road parallel to the tracks. Wilkens said the estimates are outdated because ”we’ve had considerable inflation since those estimates were derived.”
The cost for the option they picked — the parallel road — is now roughly $3 million.
Last year the county was awarded a $2.7 million grant from the Ohio Rail Development Commission for the project. Wilkens told the commissioners that could be in jeopardy.
“They’ve been gracious enough to let us hang on, they knew the difficulties we’re in,” Wilkens said. “But matter of fact they took a lot of that money back, there was $100 million that they started with and now they’ve started to claw that all back. They’ve held us because I said we’re in this legal dilemma so they’re keeping the window open, but I don’t know how long.”
Stroup said she had no comment on this latest development and St. Clair Twp. Trustee Dustin Gadd, who has also been active in this effort, said he has been advised not to discuss the matter.
There is one bright spot, Wilkens said the Norfolk Southern railroad put in a spur in Preble County where they can park idle trains. He said he can’t know for sure if it’s helping the Cedar Grove situation but “the people aren’t complaining as much.”
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