NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — A $15 million grant for a 36-mile bicycle trail through Northwest Arkansas was cut early Saturday in a U.S. House vote to slash more than $60 billion from the federal budget, said a spokesman for 3rd District Rep. Steve Womack, R-Rogers.
The budget cuts will be taken up later in the Senate, but money for the trail would be eliminated if the House spending plan passes there, said J.R. Davis in an e-mail Saturday.
Terry Eastin, executive director of Mississippi River Trail Inc. in Fayetteville, said Razorback Greenway proponents will lobby the 100-member Senate to restore funding. She said the $15 million grant, pledged last year by the Department of Transportation, would secure matching money from the Walton Family. The trail is projected to cost $40 million and be completed by 2012.
“There are thousands of us watching this very closely in the Senate,” Eastin said.
The trail would connect Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville with a paved pathway for pedestrians and bicyclists, she said.
Eastin said the trail throughout its length would be 12-feet wide and paved with asphalt or concrete.
Womack, a former Rogers mayor, has said he supports the trail but could not help save federal money for it with other worthy programs also targeted for elimination.
In a news release Saturday, he said the federal government has been “spending at an alarming rate.”
“More cuts will continue on every level and some will be difficult, even painful in some eyes, but I assure you it’s nothing more than growing pains,” he said in the release. “We will get this great country back on track, and getting our financial house in order is the first step.”
Eastin said one option for the trail’s proponents is to seek money from area private donors for the entire project.
“It could be done given the amount of available resources,” she said. “They would have to buy into the vision incredibly strongly.”