Pinckney Neighborhood resident Shellie Bender admits she’s not an expert at sediment and river stability. But, from the vantage point of her bright orange home at the very north end of Ohio Street — where she’s lived for more than three decades — she’s witnessed the Kansas River shoreline recede.

She’s watched as heavy rains swept away surrounding land, and as beavers took down large trees, killing roots that stabilized the river bank, she said.

Concern about the river bank led Bender, along with Lawrence residents Jennifer Newlin and Alison Roepe, to question the city’s ongoing project to pave a trail along the river between Burcham and Constant parks.

“We’ve had serious diminishing,” Bender said. “It’s not an environmentally sound decision to be pulling in the shoreline; to be paving and clear-cutting. Someone needs to stand up and say, ‘Wait a minute.’ We’re not dealing with a creek, pond or lake here. We have to be vigilant.”

Newlin prepared an eight-page letter about the issue for Lawrence city commissioners. The letter, her statements and Bender’s and Roepe’s statements during a public comment period at the City Commission meeting Oct. 6, caused commissioners to schedule another discussion of the project at their meeting this Tuesday.

Roepe said she appreciated commissioners’ efforts “to keep this conversation open.”

At a Lawrence City Commission meeting Sept. 22, commissioners approved without discussion a request from the Parks and Recreation Department for an additional $78,650 to lay concrete on the entire trail. It was originally proposed that the path be two-thirds asphalt and one-third concrete. After a wet summer, the department decided asphalt wouldn’t hold up.

The now $186,600 project has gone before — and gained approval from — the City Commission on several other occasions over the past year, including when the Parks and Recreation Department applied for a Sunflower Foundation grant; when it received the grant; when the project went to bid; and when a bid was approved.

Mark Hecker, assistant director of parks and recreation, said Thursday that workers had already laid supports for a small bridge. The contractor was on schedule to pour concrete this week and complete the trail Dec. 1.

The Sunflower Foundation grant, which will pay for $49,775 of the project, is available through the end of December.

“It would have been nice to have some of these concerns expressed earlier,” Hecker said.

City commissioners will be asked Tuesday to direct city staff “as needed” on the project.

The 0.64-mile-long stretch is intended to be part of a much larger loop of trails that is planned to someday circle much of the city.

The new concrete path would connect to the paved Outside for a Better Inside Trail in Sandra J. Shaw Community Health Park, making it possible to walk along the Kansas River on a paved surface from Lawrence Memorial Hospital to City Hall.

“I think we’re going to continue on with the plan, but I really don’t know,” Hecker said. “I would suspect so because they’ve seen this so many times, but there are new commissioners.”

Commissioner Lisa Larsen, who was elected at the Oct. 6 meeting, brought up the Burcham Park Trail project when asked during a public forum what recent City Commission decision she most disagreed with.

Larsen said she would have set aside the issue for further review.

“This area of Lawrence is well-known to be in a floodplain,” said Larsen, a geologist who used to own an environmental consulting firm. “Floodplains are notoriously unstable. It’s 50- to 25 feet from the largest river in Kansas. Was that originally taken into account? Now the project is more than the next low bidder.”

Bender, Newlin and Roepe said they want commissioners to stall the project.

The city should research the river bank and spend time and funds stabilizing it, they said, before paving a trail that could be damaged by water or break apart because of erosion.

“I don’t think it’s ever too late,” Bender said. “Maybe we’re catching things in the nick of time, and they’ll realize the need to spend money in a different way so we can have a river trail 10 years from now, 20 years from now. What I really don’t want to see happen is regret — ‘Why didn’t we do this? Why didn’t we think about this?'”

Hecker outlined in a memorandum on Thursday the steps the Parks and Recreation Department would take to maintain the trail, including replanting hundreds of native trees and plants in the area that was disturbed by construction.

There’s funding in the project to install rip rap — rock and other materials used to armor shorelines — along sections that may erode near the trail, according to the memorandum.

Friends of the Kaw, a local nonprofit, has committed $4,200 for erosion control, the memo states.

Roepe iterated that those steps were not enough.

She said she’s seen previously installed rip rap slide into the river.

“Burcham Park is a beautiful park, and I have loved it for years and years, and I think everyone should enjoy the beauty of that wild place,” Roepe said. “But it feels like the steps are in the wrong order to me. They need to come in and assess really what to do. It needs to be secured before other structures go in there.”

The City Commission will hold its regular meeting at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St.