LEWISBURG -- Other Rails-to-Trails pathways are in the planning stages in Columbia and Montour counties and Northumberland County.
At 30 miles, the proposed Mining Heritage Trail of Northumberland County would be the largest Rails-to-Trails path in the central portion of the state, said Steve Bartos, planning director for Northumberland County, stretching from Frackville, Schuylkill County, to the west side of Zerbe Township.
A $120,000 grant in 2007 kicked off the project's master plan and feasibility study, now about halfway done, Bartos said.
As part of the process, all of the affected municipalities have signed on, Bartos said, as have four school districts.
Fifty percent of the grant was matched by six businesses that own portions of the rail bed: Pagnotti Enterprises, Susquehanna Coal, Blaschak Coal, Waste Management Inc. of Central PA, Aqua America and the Girard Estate.
"They have to be partners on this if this is going to be successful," Bartos said.
Estimated costs for such trailways is about $100,000 per mile, giving the Lower Anthracite project a $3 million price tag, which includes the cost of land acquisition.
Project organizers in eastern Northumberland County are looking at a similar dilemma as those in Columbia and Montour counties: Who owns the trail once it's built?
One option is to form a new organization, which is what is in the beginning stages in eastern Northumberland County -- STARR, or the Strategic Teaming for Anthracite Regional Recreation.
No one has stepped to the plate, however, for a proposed trail running from Danville to Bloomsburg.
Overseen by the SEDA-Council of Governments, the trail is proposed along the historic North Branch Pennsylvania Canal, landscape architect Brian Auman, of SEDA-COG, said. The land is owned by the Joint Rail Authority, which is housed at SEDA-COG, but is a separate and independent organization.
"They don't want to own a trail or manage a trail," Auman said of the authority. "We need to get an organization in place to own, operate and manage the trail and accept the liability."
The Rails-to-Trails movement began in the Midwest in the 1960s as a way of putting to use abandoned rail corridors.
Pennsylvania missed the boat in the beginning, Auman said, by returning abandoned rail beds to the adjoining private landowners, making it nearly impossible for recreation organizations to get the land back to turn it into a trail.
An effort in Snyder County ran into such problems a few years ago. Eric Grimes, of the Middlecreek Area Community Center, said a state-funded feasibility study essentially found that the trail wasn't feasible because the rail beds reverted back to the original property owners when the line was retired. While some landowners were in favor of the trails, others, who farmed the land and built structures on top of the old rail beds, were not.
"It was really impossible for some of the land owners to put a trail in there," he said.
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