Welcome to the Future!
An Elgin community meeting about the Vista Regional Water Plan was laser focused on eminent domain. The citizen comments abou the Vista water pipleine to move water to San Antonio :
Pipeline protesting proliferates the Northern Plains. The most recent rally cry is a purchase of billboard ad space along the proposed route of a pipeline.
Dakota Rural Action purchased the billboards to get citizens engaged. The determination whether to award eminent domain to the common carrier in the permitting process.
Considering the string of recent denials of eminent domain authority to private entities, like a pipeline, in the last few months, the billboard ad buy is a smart…
Today a federal judge blocked implementation of EPA rules which would have required mapping of small waterways on private land. The case will proceed; however, the rules have been temporarily blocked.
July 9, 2015, Information Intelligence:
27 states and state agencies, as well as 14 agriculture-oriented organizations, have filed lawsuits across teh country to block the EPA water mapping project.
The EPA is seeking to map water flows, including mapping of low…
CATO, the libertarian leaning think tank, sounding the horn on Donald Trump and his reliance on eminent domain.
The juicy bits:
Mississippi State Senator Mike Seymour entered the race for his seat due to his opposition to eminent domain and China…. In his words:
“”The thing that separates us from Russia and China and all is our property rights. I understand eminent domain for transportation and stuff like that but when it comes to economic development, it shouldn’t be the government taking your property and selling it to another entity to generate more tax revenue. That’s not America. It’s something that…
Rand Paul vows to focus on private property rights and eminent domain abuses to show why Trump is not in line with Republican primary voters.
What things are we going to hear?
He said/She said/They Said abounds with the TransPecos pipeline. Its like a love triangle with the drama of a telenovela:
Trans Pecos is building the international pipeline through Big Bend and ranch lands. One of those ranches believes pipeline representatives entered to survey without permission. This trespass included sinking stakes into the land.
As a result of the pipeline trespass…an impending lawsuit. Its a case of landmen gone wild, threatening cease and desist orders against land owners.
Houston churches that were facing eminent domain to make way for a new Housing Authority development, have sued to stop the eminent domain based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
RFRA is usually only a hot topic when conservative activists want to strengthen it to stop the social issues they oppose.
But, the use of RFRA by the churches to stop eminent domain adds an added lawyer of constitutional protection. Now the local governmental entity will have to prove: