LAKE MEETING: OPPONENTS PLAN CAMPAIGN TO FIGHT KINDER AMENDMENT

MILLERSVILLE -- A group of landowners has vowed to fight a proposed legislative amendment filed by state Sen. Peter Kinder that would allow Cape Girardeau and Bollinger county voters to decide if a recreational lake should be built.

More than 100 people whose property would be affected if a 7,700-acre lake were built on the boundary of the two counties near Millersville met Wednesday night in the Millersville School auditorium to discuss a letter-writing campaign aimed at opposing Kinder's amendment.

The meeting was led by two members of the Cape Girardeau-Bollinger County Land Owners Association Citizens Against the Lake Project, which formed in May 1990. They outlined the way letters should be worded and gave the addresses and phone numbers of government representatives they said should be contacted.

"This is a land issue, it's a property-rights issue and it's an eminent-domain issue," said Joan Sebaugh, whose family has lived since 1835 on the site where the lake would be. "Who has the right to say that all the voters in the county can tell me that I have to sell my land, and they force me off of it by eminent domain for a recreation project?"

In 1990 the state legislature passed a law that gave the Cape Girardeau and Bollinger county commissions authority to put the proposal on the ballot, but the Bollinger County Commission refused to do so.

Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, has filed a proposed amendment to the law that would allow the lake proposal to be decided by voters if a sufficient number of signatures were obtained on petitions. That would bypass the county commissions ordering the proposal on the ballot.

The amendment also offers a concession to landowners by reducing the amount of land that would be claimed along the banks of the lake for development.

Joan Sebaugh's daughter Cheryl Sebaugh said nothing would make her favor a lake.

"This project would pretty much take everything that we have," she said. "You can't put a price on what has been in your family for years and years and years. This is more than my farm and my family heritage; this gets right down to landowner rights."

The lake would be created by damming the Whitewater and Little Whitewater rivers near Millersville. When first proposed it was estimated to cost $73 million and affect 200 property owners. Since then the estimated cost for buying the land and building the lake has gone up to between $84 million and $100 million, said Jim Roche, president of the citizens group.

"I have other priorities for $100 million than a lake that isn't even a lake," said one person who attended the meeting.

In 1995, Stan Crader of Marble Hill conducted a petition drive in an effort to show support of the lake in Bollinger County with hopes the proposal could get on the ballot if the law were to be changed.

"In a lot of people's minds, the issue never really died since it was never able to be put on the ballot," Crader said at the time. It was Crader's group that first brought the amendment proposal to Kinder in April 1995.

The 1990 law created a lake authority and put considerable power in its hands, including the right of eminent domain.

Roche and Joan Sebaugh questioned the constitutional legality of the lake authority claiming land through eminent domain for a recreational project.

"I want someone to prove that there is a necessity for this recreational lake," Roche said. "I believe this is nothing more than a land development project to make some people rich."

The group has scheduled its next meeting for Feb. 24 to elect officers.