US Supreme Court ruling could impact recreational trails

Everybody, it seems, loves a recreational trail. Unless the trail cuts through your property. A U.S. Supreme Court decision this week could lead to more legal action over trails created from abandoned railroad lines.

Rail trails, including the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River trails, are wildly popular around here.

“Your rail trails are really a treasured asset of communities that have them,” said Kevin Mills with the non-profit Rails to Trails Conservancy. “There’s more than 21,000 miles of rail-trail throughout the country.” Another 9,000 could be converted from rails to trails.

But it just got more complicated. A landowner in Wyoming sued to stop a half-mile extension of a trail across his property in the Medicine Bow National Forest. After lower court setbacks, the nation’s high court sided with Marvin Brandt, ruling 8-1 that the federally granted right-of-way across his property vanished when the rail line was abandoned in 2004.

Here in Washington, the ruling could impact small sections of the John Wayne Pioneer Trail, which runs from North Bend clear to the Idaho border.

“Two-hundred-fifty-three miles long would make it the longest continuous rail trail in the United States,” said Mills.

Virginia Painter, at the Washington State Parks Department, said the state owns more than 90 percent of the John Wayne trail outright. But, when it comes to trails, continuity is critical and it’s possible that a landowner along the John Wayne Trail could now file a claim against the federal government, which created the rails to trails program in the 1980s.

“At that point, the government could decide to exercise its power of eminent domain to pay just compensation to the landowner and keep that corridor in public use as a multi-use trail,” Mills explained.

Rail-banked corridors that are preserved for future use, such as the East Lake Sammamish Trail and the Cedar River Trail, or trails on land that has been purchased, remain safe. But Mills anticipates more litigation.

Sections of the 56-mile Willapa Hills Trail, in development between Chehalis and South Bend, could be subject to the high court ruling.

The state has complete control over some classic rail trails in Washington, including the 130-mile long Columbia Plateau Trail and the 31-mile Klickitat Trail.

Rail trails will not vanish, but property rights advocates call the high court decision a huge victory that could affect thousands of landowners in Washington and across the country.