Councilman Mike Scales Shows Off The Bike Trail Problem

MARIETTA, OH — A portion of the Ohio River Access Trail behind the Quality Inn on Pike Street is in shambles. It appears to have fallen apart because of a massive landslip or small landslide. City Councilor Mike Scales says the ground appears stable now, and they haven’t measured much movement in a while. “But, Lord knows if we get another wet spring or something like that.”

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This trail just opened last spring. It was the result of six years, and more than $2,800,000 worth of work. Scales says they don’t know how much it’s even going to cost to fix this. “At this time we have $700,000 of our own money in the project right here. Part of that’s been spent, and part of that’s been encumbered to be spent.” He jokingly refers to this as the River Trail Money Pit Phase 5.

It isn’t just the trail that’s falling apart. Part of a retaining wall has shifted at least a couple of feet, and a 30-inch sewage pipe was crushed. The city has to run the sewer line into a continuously running motorized pump parked on the bridge. “This is a temporary sewer line to keep the effluent flowing.”

He says they know this is going to be an expensive project. “We’re working on an estimate for the fix to the sewer line.” He says once the city gets that ironed out then they can work on getting a design to get the bike trail fixed.

Scales was a bit tight-lipped about where we go from here. “We’re in executive session so there’s a lot of things going on here we cannot really say because of attorney/client privilege.” The job of the city council now is to determine the cause of this, how it happened.

Scales says they are waiting on reports from a geotech company, forensic engineers, and attorneys. “If we file a lawsuit, we have to file it before June the 28th of this year.” He says they can’t say now, but they’re doing a lot of legwork right now to determine who they might want to include in a lawsuit. “At this point, we have no idea, because at this time we don’t know the end results of all the reports.”

Scales says what he wants is simple. “I want it fixed the whole way it was before. I want everything taken care of, all the costs we have involved in this, the sewer line, our employees' time to come and take care of the pumps. The whole nine yards.” He says he wants the trail to be made whole again. “I’ve been told by the attorneys I might be wrong, but that’s what I want.”

He says he personally used to use the trail often. “I used to use this trail going from the Shrine parking lot to the golf course parking lot, and I could squeeze out 10-miles of it on my bicycle.” He can’t now, and Scales says he can’t walk his dog down the trail like he wants to. But this problem affects all who enjoy these trails. “It’s an impediment to our tourists who come to town that want to see Marietta.”

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