PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — A financial settlement has been reached with some of the landowners along a stretch of rail line in southeastern South Dakota that is no longer used for railroad purposes and has been proposed to be turned into a public hiking and biking trail.
The U.S. government agreed to pay $127,852 in compensation to seven landowners in Bon Homme and Charles Mix counties. Easements had been granted for the railroad to use their properties along the route between Tyndall and Ravinia.
The stretch is part of the Napa-Platte rail line that the state government of South Dakota came to own more than 50 years ago.
The state government on April 14, 2023, asked the federal Surface Transportation Board to issue a Notice of Interim Trail Use or Abandonment over the rail line. The STB did so on August 18, 2023, for 33.6 miles of the rail line between milepost 20.9 at Tyndall, and milepost 54.5 at Ravinia.
The landowners then filed the claims, because the property easements that had been granted to the railroad didn’t provide for a public use.
One of the attorneys who handled their case declined to provide a copy of the settlement. That means the individual allocations of the settlement won’t be publicly disclosed.
“I’m sorry, but we consider the settlement confidential client information. That settlement was not part of the court’s docket and is thus not a public record, so I can’t share that with you,” attorney Meghan Largent said in an email.
She added the landowners as a group received the full amount of the settlement and that the U.S. government also paid a separate undisclosed amount to the law firm that filed the landowners’ claims. Largent said the firm received 61% of the amount that was actually billed.
“Creating a public-access recreational trail across Plaintiffs’ property and appropriating a new easement for possible future railroad use has taken from Plaintiffs the value of the land physically appropriated for this trail corridor and greatly diminished the value of the Plaintiffs’ property adjoining this trail corridor,” their initial complaint stated.
The landowners sharing in the settlement are Gail C. Johannsen-Bridge Revocable Trust of Wagner; Jane A. Larson of Tyndall; Myron L. Lindmann of Ravinia; WM Farms, LLC, organized by William Minow of Tyndall; Rose Novak Life Estate and Rick Novak of Tyndall; Mike Petrik of Avon; and Virgil and Connie Pravacek of Tyndall.
Largent said the landowners’ claims didn’t take a position on the proposed conversion to a public trail. “Frankly, our lawsuit doesn’t have anything to do with the trail,” she said on Friday.
A local group, Friends of the Tabor to Platte Rails to Trails, has been raising money for a feasibility study that is also being funded through a federal program.
The Lewis Rice law firm based in St. Louis, Missouri, now has a second case involving landowners from the area in settlement negotiations with the U.S. government, according to Largent, and recently filed a third case.
