I-66: FEASIBILITY STUDY PART OF P&G DEAL

The Missouri Transportation Department has agreed to conduct a feasibility study for a proposed Interstate 66 route through southern Missouri.

Gov. Mel Carnahan pushed for the study, local civic and business leaders said.

The state committed to the study this month as local and state economic development officials sought to convince Procter and Gamble to choose Cape Girardeau County as the site for a new plant.

P&G announced last week that it will build a $350 million tissue-and-towel plant adjacent to its diaper plant near Cape Girardeau.

The Transportation Department study is expected to begin this month and be completed within 90 days, officials said.

Joe Mickes, who as chief engineer heads up the Transportation Department, said Monday that his agency agreed to do the study at the request of P&G.

Mickes signed off on the study in an April 7 letter to Michael Powers, P&G's strategic planning manager with the giant firm's corporate headquarters in Cincinnati.

Kentucky has completed a study of the feasibility of building an east-west interstate across its state. Mickes said Missouri's feasibility study will look at the cost of extending such a route across southern Missouri.

The study will look at three possible routes:

-- Two would come through Southern Illinois and cross the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau, making use of the new, four-lane Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge under construction.

One of those routes would involve widening Highway 34 from Cape Girardeau to Van Buren, where it would hook up with Highway 60, which runs west to Springfield. The other would run south along Interstate 55, hooking up with Highway 60 at Sikeston.

-- The third route envisions the proposed interstate crossing the Mississippi River near Wickliffe, Ky. That alternative, however, would involve building a new bridge.

Scott Meyer, the Transportation Department's district engineer in Sikeston, said the 90-day study won't be as detailed as the Kentucky study, which took more than a year to complete.

But Meyer said the study would look at benefit-cost ratios.

Mickes said, "I think you could look at it and come up with some reasonable cost estimates and say what is feasible."

If a new four-lane highway is built between Cape Girardeau and Paducah, Ky., it would have to cross through Southern Illinois. Such a route could take it through the Shawnee National Forest. That would pose environmental problems, Mickes said.

"Putting an interstate route through a national forest is going to be extremely difficult," he said.

But local business and civic leaders welcomed the study.

Cape Girardeau Mayor Al Spradling III said: "We need an east-west corridor that we can use to move things for industry as well as tourism. We don't have any efficient east-west route right now."

"I think what they have done is give this project its biggest, single boost yet," said Cape Girardeau lawyer Don Dickerson.

Dickerson is president of Southeast Missouri State University's Board of Regents and a close friend of the governor.

A major east-west highway could help make Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri one of the leading industrial regions of the state, he said.

It also could benefit the university, which currently draws most of its students from areas north and south along Interstate 55. Dickerson said an east-west highway would increase access to the school and could boost enrollment.

Dickerson asked Carnahan to back the feasibility study at the request of Blueprint for Progress, a group of Cape Girardeau area business leaders. The group includes Earl Norman, who has lobbied for years for the interstate project.

The group has budgeted $50,000 this year to finance I-66 lobbying efforts directed by Walt Wildman of Cape Girardeau. The funds are administered by the city of Cape Girardeau.

Dickerson said he talked to the governor's staff and wrote a letter to the governor in early March, pushing the feasibility study.

In the letter, Dickerson told the governor that the highway study could help Cape Girardeau County land a second P&G plant.

Carnahan agreed to support the study, which also had the backing of Mickes and Joe Driskill, director of the state's Department of Economic Development.

Carnahan disclosed the decision at a brief meeting with about 15 members of Blueprint for Progress at the Show Me Center on April 10. The meeting followed the inauguration of Dr. Dale Nitzschke as the university's 16th president. Dickerson attended the meeting.

Dickerson credits the governor with getting the state to commit to the study. "I don't think there is any question, in my mind, the governor certainly provided the momentum in getting that done."