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Texas Agriculture Archive

November 15, 2002

TFB backs landowners
in powerline dispute

The Texas Farm Bureau filed a "Friend of the Court" brief on Oct. 30 in the Third District Court of Appeals in Austin in support of South Texas landowners who are resisting Central Power and Light's plans to construct a 52-mile power grid across their properties from Coleto Creek, in Goliad County, to a substation at Pawnee, in Karnes County.

In the brief, TFB urged the appellate court to reverse a district court decision affirming the Public Utility Commission's final order allowing CP&L to enter cultivated farmland.

The brief argues that the PUC acted outside the scope of its power by failing to properly consider factors prescribed by statute and in violation of the Due Process and Due Course protections of the U.S. and Texas Constitutions.

The brief also argued that PUC failed to adhere to the Legislature's standards for the exercise of delegated power.

TFB Attorney Jo Campbell said the Commission had improper ex parte communications with ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the independent entity responsible for managing the state's electrical grid), which means the appellants had no notice or opportunity to participate, as required by law.

A coalition of landowners challenged CPL, during the permitting process, to show the need for taking new land rather than using a nearby, existing right-of-way which already dissects their properties.

"Decisions by the PUC have the effect of allowing companies seeking to build transmission lines to exercise the power of eminent domain," said Donald Patman, president of the Texas Farm Bureau. "The PUC should not authorize the use of this power to take agricultural land without establishing that there is an urgent and overriding need for the land that is more important than future agricultural production."

Patman said the PUC should require that utilities place transmission lines along existing rights-of-way and seek alternatives before resorting to eminent domain to take cultivated land.