On LCRA, "Local" Eminent Domain, and Old Time Politicians

Unless you have not been paying attention to our Facebook site, which I could not blame you for lately, you know that we have found ourselves in what may shape into a battle of eminent domain with one of our Texas utilities, the Lower Colorado River Authority. This has been an eye opening experience for us and, without beating a dead horse, I would like to share my thoughts on what has transpired and what may transpire.

When I was a kid I learned about eminent domain. The city of Denton, where I grew up, condemned some land through a cemetery to make a small two lane road into a major boulevard. We kids, of course, were intrigued. What happened to those bodies that were buried in the right of way?

Since then, as a lawyer, I have dealt with eminent domain issues now and then. I was involved in high stakes litigation with a failed savings and loan, a would-be developer, and a bunch of guys who wore chains but no socks in the early 1990s over something called the Playa del Rio at the confluence of the Rio Grande River and the Gulf of Mexico. Our case was turned upside down when Ann Richards, then Governor of Texas, wrote a handwritten note to then VP Al Gore that led to the Federal Government taking the property and flipping the beaches to the State of Texas.

When we moved to the farm in Fredericksburg, we thought again some about eminent domain. The road that passes our house has become a short-cut from highway to highway. Would the county condemn part of our garden to widen the road, we wondered?

What we are faced with now was beyond our possible anticipations: a state utility, LCRA, threatens to surround our back 200 acres, and then bisect it, to deliver wind power (really?) to folks in Austin and San Antonio. They want to plant 165 lattice towers all over our farm.

Now, it has struck me. Isn't the public good that eminent domain is supposed to be used for supposed to be local? Aren't the folks who sacrifice also supposed to be at least theoretical beneficiaries of the taking? Is land supposed to be taken in one place purely for the benefit of other folks, far away, and with no common interests? This is not eminent domain as I first learned about it -- taking land in the local cemetery for widening a road. This is the kind of issue that has divided politics in another urban-rural state, New York, for years. My surprise is that it is happening in Texas. It shows what I have feared; that despite all of our "cowboy" inclinations and rhetoric, we have become a state in which rural interests are only there to be exploited by urban interests. This is not the Texas I know, and not one I want to live in.

So on to local County government. People in town that I respect say that the City and County are just down the street from one another and fifty years apart. At no time has that been more evident to me than today, at a meeting of our County Commissioners, the utility ("LCRA"), and the regulator (our state's Public Utility Commission). Our elected representatives were not informed on these issues, were old, stale, and no match for the shiny happy people sent by the utility and the regulator. What's worse, the members of the public who managed to find out about this meeting (which was deliberately "kept quiet") were much more informed than were our County reps. Now, I can understand why our County officials were not quite up to speed; they are arguing with the City about how much the City should be paid for lost trees that must be cut down for the airport here to resume night landing status. But, notwithstanding that, it was embarrassing to witness our County officials to be taken to task by the low level bureaucrats that the utility and the regulator sent to the meeting and the general public.

So here we are, informed citizens, left to our own devices in the biggest fight of our lives over thousands of citizen's land, while the County officials try to get up to speed in their spare time while arguing with the City over the price of trees. So inspiring. Maybe we would be better off if our local government would just get out of the way and let us talk to the powers that be. if you are just taking up space, get out of the way!

And that's the news from the Hill Country, where are the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the powers that be want to surround us with an industrial electrical farm.