Overland Park ? This Kansas City suburb says it could cost millions to make its sidewalks comply with a reinstated provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The law, enacted in 1991, required that curb ramps include special bumpy surfaces to alert visually impaired pedestrians of approaching streets or hazardous drop-offs.

But three years after the law took effect, the provision was suspended amid a debate about the usefulness of the warning surfaces and concerns that they would be difficult to design and damaged by snow and ice removal efforts.

Unknown to city leaders in Overland Park and elsewhere, the federal government in 2001 let the suspension lapse.

Overland Park built hundreds of curbs without the warning surfaces before the suspension lapsed in late 2002.

“This one was a sleeper,” Overland Park Public Works Director Bob Lowry recently told City Council members. “It was a stealth maneuver at best.”

Now, city engineers are mapping out a plan for making more than 1,300 curb ramps comply with the act.

Jim de Jong, executive director of the Great Plains Americans with Disabilities Act and Information Technology Center, said cities can’t be blamed for not being aware that the law had been reinstated.

“I think this is just one little thing, it’s one paragraph out of 100 pages that slipped by them,” de Jong said.