The LCRA held its two open houses today in Fredericksburg. There were plenty of maps and displays, and lots of shiny-happy LCRA employees (who obviously drew the short stray in having to be part of this road show), but precious little information conveyed. We left with the firm conviction that the LCRA holds these public open houses just so they can say they did -- a feather in their cap for the PUC and the disgruntled public.
The LCRA people were at least outwardly sympathetic to our problems, but in a detached sort of way -- as if they were not in any way responsible for them. You wonder if these employers receive similar sensitivity training to that given to funeral home directors. Indeed, the sessions resemble funerals. Something is side of each attendee had died, or at least was dying, and the only good part of it at all was folks got to see friends and neighbors they don't get to see often enough.
People were given the opportunity to use grease pencils to outline their properties and specific areas of concern on the huge glossy maps. We did it, and again it was mostly a feel good experience. It is not as if anyone will take notice -- and you have to know those marks will be erased soon as the LCRA prepares the exhibits for yet another public dog-and-pony show.
Timetables were given. As you may know from following this issue, the LCRA's application to the PUC is due July 6, 2010. Apparently, the actual PUC proceeding will take place in very early 2011. We haven't much time to work, but that in itself may be a good thing. This whole process and the prospect of having one's property ruined and dreams shattered has a paralyzing effect. We are grateful that the process looks to be relatively short. Having said that, as a lawyer, I am doubtful of all of these timelines.
The process necessarily pits neighbor against neighbor, and tears communities apart. No one wants these huge towers in their back yard. Whether the LCRA intends this or not, by refusing to disclose preferred routes even at the time of application the result is that they are quite able to divide and conquer.
The highlight of the meeting was the 1/4 scale tower and house brought to the open house by the Clearview Alliance. Seeing that tower dwarf a home was perhaps the first inkling many of the members of the public had of what is truly in store for them, and what is at stake.
As to the low point, it had to be the police presence at the meeting. Did the LCRA think that anyone would be so out of control that they would need police protection. These folks are mad, but they are also too proud to even show the LCRA the tip of their anger.
People were encouraged to write down their comments, but I think even the LCRA would admit that anyone who believes that their comments will matter is fooling themselves. The only way to have any impact in the proceeding is to intervene as a party to it. You had to feel that this too was a therapeutic exercise -- again designed to convince people that their voices are being heard and perhaps even in the hope that people will stop with commenting and refrain for intervening. The failure to designate preferred routes, even at the application stage, naturally has this same sort of chilling effect.
For those who are with us, either through our website http://lcra-does-fbg.com, or at Facebook page, "The LCRA Wants to ruin Fredericksburg and the Texas Hill Country; Stop Them," we appreciate your support and encourage you to get involved in the process. For those of you fortunate enough not to have a reason for concern about this, we apologize for ranting about it, and are truly envious that what is happening to us is not happening to you.
Happy trails for now,
Tom
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The "Stop LCRA" website is up!
Our new website, "LCRA Does FBG," is up and can now be accessed through this weblink. We wanted to go live before the LCRA's Fredericksburg open houses tomorrow, so the site still needs some work, but much of the content is in place. We also have a Facebook page on this issue, "The LCRA is Ruining Fredericksburg, Texas and the Hill Country; Stop Them" which you can access through this Facebook link.
For those of you who, like me until several weeks ago, have too many irons in the fire to have paid much attention to this issue, this is a critical time for the Hill Country, and we need folks who care to raise there voices on this issue and weigh in. Essentially, the LCRA (Lower Colorado River Authority) is under contract with the Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to build hundreds of miles of transmission lines from wind farms in West Texas to users in the State's major metropolitan areas. While we can argue about the efficiency of bringing electricity hundreds of miles, there exists shut-in electricity generated by the wind farms and politically the process as a whole seems unstoppable.
The devil is, of course, in the details. While we are all for the use of clean energy, we also believe that care should be given to not unnecessarily impact the areas, including our Texas Hill Country, that the transmission lines travel through. The Texas Hill Country is a particularly scenic area, dependent to a large extent on tourism, and care should be taken to preserve as much of its character as is possible. We believe this proposition should be self-evident.
But there is much reason for skepticism that the LCRA is approaching this project with the care that we feel it deserves. Here in Gillespie County and Fredericksburg, the LCRA's proposed "CREZ" routes travel through beautiful scenic areas that are treasures to us and our tourists, including flirting with the Pedernales River, and the farms and ranches along it, for some five miles.
We also are concerned that the routes seem to have been devised in a way that unnecessarily impacts some land owners by moving several different directions throughout one piece of property. On our property, the proposed lines start moving from south to north along one boundary, move across the width of our property from east to west, and then move down the other property line. On our modest farm alone, the LCRA threatens to surround us and bisect us with one and one-half miles of 160 foot by 65 foot towers and transmission lines, making the majority of our farm, and our tourist cabins, worthless and unusable. Unfortunately, we are learning we are not alone. Surely the LCRA could coordinate its routes so that the lines and towers move only once across a single owner's property, right? It would seem so.
Lastly, there has been an outcry over the LCRA's use of lattice type structures, which leave a huge physical and visual footprint, rather than single pole structures (called monopoles). Recently another company used monopoles in constructing a virtually identical project through the Hill Country. They are not attractive, but are certainly more attractive and have less of a negative impact than do the lattice type structures. Despite this, the LCRA has already begun ordering materials for the lattice type structures.
Consistently, the LCRA dumps all of its lack of responsiveness on the PUC. It says that it will use monopoles rather than lattice type structures if the PUC orders it to do so (one wonders about the materials already ordered and stock-piled). It says that the PUC, not LCRA, will eventually determine what routes are selected. In our minds this is a cop-out. The PUC will ultimately choose the routes, but it will do so from preliminary routes already set out by LCRA. If the LCRA is irresponsible in laying out preliminary routes, the PUC will have only the opportunity to choose routes from those proffered by LCRA. As it looks now, the PUC will be choosing from several bad choices, and not the best choice. The LCRA should take the blame for proffering bad routes in the first place.
As to the pole choice, clearly the LCRA is bullying its way towards its own choice, and is attempting to secure this choice by ordering materials in advance of the PUC decision. How likely is it that the PUC will waste material already purchased by LCRA?
The LCRA's application on the McCamey D - Kendall - Gillespie route is due July 6, 2010. It is likely that many proposed alternatives, including the worst ones, will remain on the map. Because of deadlines, folks will face the choice of ponying up big bucks to intervene in that application proceeding without even knowing whether they will ultimately be impacted. By approaching the issue in this manner, the LCRA and PUC will limit the number of Intervenors and pit neighbor against neighbor -- when the true enemies are LCRA and the PUC.
There is a limited time to change the process. After July 6, 2010, the only way to influence the process will be to be an intervening landowner. The time for public outcry will be over. The LCRA and the PUC need to here from the public now, before it is too late.
For those of you who, like me until several weeks ago, have too many irons in the fire to have paid much attention to this issue, this is a critical time for the Hill Country, and we need folks who care to raise there voices on this issue and weigh in. Essentially, the LCRA (Lower Colorado River Authority) is under contract with the Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to build hundreds of miles of transmission lines from wind farms in West Texas to users in the State's major metropolitan areas. While we can argue about the efficiency of bringing electricity hundreds of miles, there exists shut-in electricity generated by the wind farms and politically the process as a whole seems unstoppable.
The devil is, of course, in the details. While we are all for the use of clean energy, we also believe that care should be given to not unnecessarily impact the areas, including our Texas Hill Country, that the transmission lines travel through. The Texas Hill Country is a particularly scenic area, dependent to a large extent on tourism, and care should be taken to preserve as much of its character as is possible. We believe this proposition should be self-evident.
But there is much reason for skepticism that the LCRA is approaching this project with the care that we feel it deserves. Here in Gillespie County and Fredericksburg, the LCRA's proposed "CREZ" routes travel through beautiful scenic areas that are treasures to us and our tourists, including flirting with the Pedernales River, and the farms and ranches along it, for some five miles.
We also are concerned that the routes seem to have been devised in a way that unnecessarily impacts some land owners by moving several different directions throughout one piece of property. On our property, the proposed lines start moving from south to north along one boundary, move across the width of our property from east to west, and then move down the other property line. On our modest farm alone, the LCRA threatens to surround us and bisect us with one and one-half miles of 160 foot by 65 foot towers and transmission lines, making the majority of our farm, and our tourist cabins, worthless and unusable. Unfortunately, we are learning we are not alone. Surely the LCRA could coordinate its routes so that the lines and towers move only once across a single owner's property, right? It would seem so.
Lastly, there has been an outcry over the LCRA's use of lattice type structures, which leave a huge physical and visual footprint, rather than single pole structures (called monopoles). Recently another company used monopoles in constructing a virtually identical project through the Hill Country. They are not attractive, but are certainly more attractive and have less of a negative impact than do the lattice type structures. Despite this, the LCRA has already begun ordering materials for the lattice type structures.
Consistently, the LCRA dumps all of its lack of responsiveness on the PUC. It says that it will use monopoles rather than lattice type structures if the PUC orders it to do so (one wonders about the materials already ordered and stock-piled). It says that the PUC, not LCRA, will eventually determine what routes are selected. In our minds this is a cop-out. The PUC will ultimately choose the routes, but it will do so from preliminary routes already set out by LCRA. If the LCRA is irresponsible in laying out preliminary routes, the PUC will have only the opportunity to choose routes from those proffered by LCRA. As it looks now, the PUC will be choosing from several bad choices, and not the best choice. The LCRA should take the blame for proffering bad routes in the first place.
As to the pole choice, clearly the LCRA is bullying its way towards its own choice, and is attempting to secure this choice by ordering materials in advance of the PUC decision. How likely is it that the PUC will waste material already purchased by LCRA?
The LCRA's application on the McCamey D - Kendall - Gillespie route is due July 6, 2010. It is likely that many proposed alternatives, including the worst ones, will remain on the map. Because of deadlines, folks will face the choice of ponying up big bucks to intervene in that application proceeding without even knowing whether they will ultimately be impacted. By approaching the issue in this manner, the LCRA and PUC will limit the number of Intervenors and pit neighbor against neighbor -- when the true enemies are LCRA and the PUC.
There is a limited time to change the process. After July 6, 2010, the only way to influence the process will be to be an intervening landowner. The time for public outcry will be over. The LCRA and the PUC need to here from the public now, before it is too late.
Friday, February 12, 2010
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
