The Washington Area Transportation Committee last week pledged the support for a new Warren County connection to the Missouri River bridge under construction.Warren County Commissioner Hubie Kluesner and Boonslick Regional Planning Commission (BRPC) Executive Director Chad Eggen approached the committee Monday to request an endorsement of the plan for an elevated causeway to extend off the new bridge.There are no immediate plans for the connection, but planners say that an elevated roadway could allow access between Washington and Warren County during major flooding like that which occurred in May.“It would be a connection — we want to make it clear to everyone the need to keep the conversation going,” Eggen commented.“It would be something that is not going to get flooded,” he added, “so there is not a $60 million bridge to nowhere.”According to Eggen, the causeway would carry vehicles and pedestrians. Kluesner noted that 13,000 people cross the Missouri River bridge daily, many who live in Warren County and work in Franklin County.“When water is over Highway 47, they are not going anywhere,” he said.He added that for more than two days in May there was no connection to the bridge. The situation could be more dire if the levee near Treloar would break.“If the levee ever breaks, it is destruction from Treloar to Augusta,” Kluesner told the committee.“People put their heads in the sand and don’t see the problem we have,” he added. “We were inches away from the levee being a problem.”He explained that 600 children on the north side of the bridge attend classes in the Washington School District, as well as students who attend St. Francis Regional High School and other parochial schools.“The main concern is connectivity for our residents to hospitals and schools,” Eggen said.A number of southern Warren County residents are employed across the river in Washington.During the May flood, emergency officials received inquiries asking if those people should leave work early or avoid going at all, for fear of being stranded on the wrong side of the river if the bridge closed.Eggen noted that there also are economic development and tourism interests in getting a connection to the bridge out of the floodplain.During Monday’s meeting, Eggen questioned future Washington Municipal Airport expansion plans. Committee member Ray Frankenberg II, owner of Washington Aviation Inc., said an 8,000-foot-long runway is in the “foreseeable” future.“We don’t want to go into (plan for a connection) an area where there is a potential for future airport expansion,” Eggen said.Missouri Department of Transportation Area Engineer Judy Wagner said a similar plan was outlined in a Major Transportation Investment Analysis that was finalized in 2001.“We probably should get that document back out,” she said. “There is a lot of good information we can use to plan for a future alignment.”According to Eggen, the plans for a causeway are only preliminary.He added that BRPC is updating its regional transportation plan, a requirement of the federal government.“We are on the cusp of a lot of other regions,” he said.Highway 47 Bridge