Parks director hopes FEMA will cover Big Oak Tree State Park cleanup

Big Oak Tree State Park will reopen before the end of the summer, according to the director of Missouri State Parks. 
The park is located within the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway.

Bill Bryan says that the park should be available for day use, but the visitor’s center and other facilities will not be ready until next year. The buildings are structurally sound, he says. They just need to be cleaned up.

Bryan says that cleanup costs have not yet been determined.

“We’ll work with FEMA like the other land owners in the floodway and look for some help with that so that Missouri taxpayers, who have already paid to build that park once, it’s only fair that if the rest of the nation benefited from the operation of the floodway that the rest of the nation should help pay for the restoration of the park as well,” Bryan said.

Bryan says that it is too early to tell if the floods caused any ecological damage to the park.

Jacob McCleland, KRCU

Posted in: Big Oak Tree State Park,Bill Bryan,Birds Point,disaster assistance,FEMA