New Push For Eminent Domain Reform Expected At Texas Legislature
If you want to cook up a battle over private property rights in Texas, heres the recipe:
Take a handful of sprawling cities and growing populations that are expanding into once-rural areas, add a booming oil and gas industry with a desperate need for new pipelines to move record-high volumes of hydrocarbons, and sprinkle in the new electric lines needed to power both of those trends.
In recent years, as companies and governments build more roads, power lines and pipelines across Texas, rural landowners have become increasingly familiar with and angry about the powers of eminent domain. Their efforts to check those powers at the state capitol havent succeeded, but theres a new push on the horizon for the 2019 Texas legislative session. Heres what you need to know about eminent domain in Texas.
If you havent heard the phrase before, eminent domain is essentially the power public entities and some companies have to use private property to build something, even if the landowner doesnt want to play along. (President Trump has talked about using that power to build his promised border wall.)
Read more: http://www.kut.org/post/new-push-eminent-domain-reform-expected-texas-legislature