Monthly Archives: April 2019

Lawmakers, lobbyists and landowners sparred at a Capitol committee hearing on Thursday over a batch of bills designed to protect property owners whose land may be seized by private companies to build oil and gas pipelines. A bipartisan — though largely Republican — group of House and Senate legislators whose districts have been targeted for pipeline construction amid a historic oil and gas boom have proposed several measures this year aimed at helping landowners and local officials negotiate with deep-pocketed…

We can be fairly certain that gas pipeline giant Kinder Morgan didn’t have this consequence in mind when it decided to route a massive, nearly four-foot diameter gas pipeline through the Texas Hill Country and over the fragile Edwards Aquifer. That consequence is a renewed understanding among political partisans of all kinds that love of the land is a value shared by all. Well, maybe not the pipeline owners. The Permian Highway Pipeline cuts through some of what traditional political labeling calls…

Hays County, the city of Kyle and a coalition of Hill Country landowners have filed a lawsuit to fight the route of Kinder Morgan's proposed Permian Highway Pipeline and challenge how the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry allows companies to use eminent domain laws. During a Monday morning news conference at Kyle City Hall, the coalition released copies of a 19-page lawsuit against the Texas Railroad Commission, five agency executives, pipeline operator Kinder Morgan and a…

Corporate entities that take property with eminent domain authority often claim the system is working. It does. For them. Corporations with this powerful, often abused, tool are not required to follow the same rules of transparency that a government must observe. They are not required to have public meetings. Eminent domain takings in general do not mandate a good faith offer. Texas Farm Bureau has documented many cases where property owners believe they’ve been slighted in the process. Such is…

With the state's ever-increasing infrastructure needs, Texas farmers and ranchers are bracing for the likelihood of pipelines, transmission lines andrailways cutting through their fields and pastures. But some say it’s unfair to allow private companies or other entities wielding the power of eminent domain to pressure landowners to accept lowball offers that don’t take into account the overall loss of value to their property. “This may be the property rights issue of our time,” Texas Farm Bureau spokesman Gary Joiner…