Geography Demography

The rugged individualistic subculture of Texas and our beliefs in personal liberty, property rights, self-reliance, and free competition means that sometimes those values clash.   Texas’ population growth also means more legal battles pitting landowner property rights against business growth as the state’s population expands and development brings competing values into conflict.

Witness the most recent tug-of-war between a northeast Texas farmer, Julia Trigg Crawford, and a Canadian pipeline company (TransCanda) seeking to run a pipeline run through Crawford’s property.  The dispute illustrates the tension between economic development and eminent domain-the legal principle that federal, state, county, or local government authorities have the power to take private property for public use after paying just compensation (the fair market value decided by legal proceedings) to the property owner.   Air, water, and land rights are subject to eminent domain.

Crawford’s case is just one of several in recent months where corporations and public entities are laying claim to private property because of expanding economic capacity or natural resource rights.  The boom in hydraulic-fracturing and wind-power which both require pipelines or transmission lines across rural regions has also contributed to more disputes.

Hydraulic-fracturing or “fracking” is the process of injecting a mixture of sand and water into underground cracks to force more oil and gas to flow into a reservoir where it can be extracted.  Increasingly there are concerns about the environmental impact and safety of such procedures, but fracking has increased both oil and gas production and revenues.   The Eagle Ford Shale area (San Antonio) boasts revenue of $25 billion last year alone, and the creation of 50,000 jobs, while the Barnett Shale (Ft. Worth) brought in $65 billion in 2011 and has created over 100,000 jobs.

While recent eminent domain cases have tended to favor the government, not all cases have been adverse to property owners—an East Texas farmer successfully contested a company’s right to build a carbon-dioxide pipeline across his land.

And not all the disputes are about pipelines.  Recent cases include a wide array of issues.

1) The City of Austin taking over a downtown attorney’s property for use as a parking garage and chilling station

2) A Houston conflict about stopping a 21-story luxury tower from being built in a residential neighborhood

3) The City of Beaumont’s right to demolish a neglected building

4) A property owner trying to keep the public off her beachfront property that had eroded all the way up to the front of her house

5) Questions about whether landowners own the groundwater beneath their land

Where does it go from here?

For Crawford and TransCanda that’s up to a pending court decision out of the Sixth Court of Appeals for the state of Texas. No matter what, an appeal is most likely to ensue.

For us, that depends on the geography and demography of Texas.  After all, land use issues ultimately are the result of competition over natural resources and the changing nature and needs of the people who need those resources. Last legislative session, Senate Bill 18 strengthened requirements for businesses wanting to use eminent domain powers.   Guess that means it’s all up to we the people.