To the editor:
I live between the bridges in Troy and I’ve seen the river looking robust and I’ve seen it down to a creek level. I don’t like the plan for a “walkway” or a bike path, along the south side of the Great Miami River. There is already a bike-path all along the river on the north side.
The low dam near the Hobart Cabinet Company, is scheduled to be removed in 2026-2027. It will allow movement of fish along the river to resume living where they were living prior to the building of the Miami Conservancy Levees. I don’t have a problem with that. The “lake” that exists because of the low dam, is picturesque. I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of this lake and the bridges on either side. I don’t think the lake is sacred. I think it was fun while it lasted.
What I do think is that the bike-path, planned for the south side of the river, is a GIGANTIC mistake and is only being planned because there is MONEY, GRANT MONEY to be spent, and bike-paths are the easiest way to spend GRANT MONEY. The plan is to take this extra GRANT MONEY and use it to make a ledge of rock and gravel and asphalt all along the south side of the river, connecting Treasure Island to Crawford Street, so that people on the “east end of Troy” will have a walkway or a bike-path to get to Treasure Island. I always thought the surface streets and the existing bike-path was fine for this purpose.
The plan is for the City Council, through the park board, with the assent of the Miami Conservancy District to put in a broad base level of concrete, gravel and substrate, with an asphalt bike-path along the south side of the river, where nothing but the levee exists right now. This will allow bikers and walkers to traverse the distance on a path by the river, that matches the one on the north side of the river. They would not have to walk on sidewalks along Water Street, but to walk along the river.
The cost of this bike-path “project” would instead, if it was spent on the actual river course, make a magnificent start to dredging the river and putting in “weirs” to make the river look like something to be proud of.
David Cornelisse
Troy
