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Wyoming Energy News

In Wyoming, a private entity can take someone else’s private property for its own economic gain. This was the source of a lot of heartache among some ranchers during Wyoming’s most recent natural gas boom. Some groups said rather than serving the greater public interest, eminent domain was invoked for limited corporate gains.

Those concerns led to some modest modifications of the state’s eminent domain laws in 2007. However, Freudenthal made clear that he wants the discussion today limited to electrical power lines and not roadways, oil and gas, or railroads.

REAL is a group of some 12 different landowner associations in eastern Wyoming trying to attract commercial-scale wind energy development as a means to supplement their ranching incomes. While those ranchers hope to make money from the wind turbines themselves, they don’t want their neighbors who don’t have wind turbines overrun with power lines and no compensation for it.

Rather than just making a one-time payment to a landowner — as is the case when eminent domain is used to gain an easement — Whitton said his group would like to see those landowners receive an annual payment.

The landowner associations in eastern Wyoming have a sense of what is really necessary in these private takings.  What they should effectively receive is a licensing fee.  Interestingly, the article claims that the utilities are concerned about paying landowners over a 1,000 linear mile project.  However, they have to pay them just compensation in a condemnation case and a licensing procedure premised upon a profit is not an irrational approach.

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CA.gov

Gill Ranch Storage is a project being developed to serve the wholesale gas market in California. It will be located at the Gill Ranch producing gas field, near Fresno in central California.
    
The Gill Ranch Storage LLC (Pacific Gas and Electric) has filed before the Public Utilities Commission its proposal to acquire land for a large gas storage facility.  The PUC must first approve the plan.  The hearing is upcoming and should be watched closely to see what type of challenges remain.  Given the recent activities opposing gas storage in California, this could receive vociferous objections.

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News OK

Assistant City Manager Cathy O’Connor tried to quell fears that the city would push out all landowners in the area.

"This process does not mean we are going to acquire all the land in the Core to Shore area through eminent domain or urban renewal,” O’Connor said. "That’s not possible. There isn’t enough public money to do that.”

Oklahoma City has made an aggressive attempt to change the neighborhood by rerouting I-40 to the Oklahoma river.  A great concern for the businesses may turn out to be that the acquisitions may occur as a series of spot takings, leaving those not taken damaged, yet without compensation.

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Powell Tribune

Under the bill, no one could use condemnation authority to erect, place or expand collector systems. An amendment to the bill exempted public utilities.

Collector systems, according to the bill, are conductor infrastructure, including conductors, towers, substations, switch-gear and other components needed to deliver power from any commercial wind generating facility to transmission lines that send the power to a grid.
    
The Wyoming Legislature has granted the utilities control of all windmills in the State, by allowing windmill operators the right of condemnation power.

Is this good?  The response probably depends on whether the utilities will be regulated and whether property owners are treated fairly.

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Crain's

With an intensive acquisition process ahead — about 130 privately owned parcels remain at the site — an EDC board member is asking for a course change, suggesting that the 1999 plan to assemble an industrial park may be outdated in 2010 Detroit.

“We ought to begin to recognize that some of our best ideas are 10 years old and reassess them,” EDC board member Conrad Mallett Jr., president of DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital, told fellow board members and Detroit Economic Growth Corp. officials at a meeting last week. “It's time to throw in the towel and say, "It was a hell of an idea, but it's not working out.' “    
    
The Crain’s article talks about the exceptionally difficult situation of assembling land for an I-94 industrial park.  The area is a mess.  It is the perfect reason for supporting Mayor Bing’s proposal to “downsize” the City.  

The underlying problem with the original economic park notion is that it probably was not legal.  Hathcock reversed Poletown, because the later decision barred acquisitions for economic benefit or tax improvements.   There is something distinctly different in trying to provide public services such as police, fire and utilities to an underutilized area and taking land so the tax base will improve in the community.
    
The reality of the I-94 industrial park is that the area was and is so blighted that the community could have moved forward  under the Blight Rehabilitation provisions.

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AP

Lawmakers boosted financial incentives last year to lure such projects to Kentucky. And they're working on legislation this year that would extend eminent domain rights to pipeline companies that would dispose of carbon dioxide, one of the chief byproducts of converting coal to cleaner burning fuels.

That measure passed the House last week and is pending in the Senate.

Lawmakers have boasted that passing the pipeline measure would help put Kentucky out front in converting coal to cleaner-burning fuels and could help the state if federal regulators impose additional restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.

Kentucky already allows the use of eminent domain for natural gas, oil and similar pipelines. The expansion would allow the proposed plants to pipe carbon dioxide to Texas to be injected underground.

This Business Week article covers a number of substantial issues.  First, there is a fear in many communities that if their State does not take on the Clean Coal Project, it will simply go to an adjacent State.
    
Then there is the risk the federal government will come after the State unless it obtains additional restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.  
    
All this leads to the notion of carbon dioxide being injected underground.  The advantage of transferring the carbon dioxide to Texas by pipe for underground injection is that carbon dioxide may be one of the newer tools to obtain additional oil out of the ground.  
    
So there we have it, the States worrying that if they don’t have the coal gasification process in their State, it will simply be lost to another.

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The News Tribune

Johnson said that he hopes the port won’t need to condemn property in the future. “I don’t like eminent domain, period,” Johnson said. “My goal is to see if we can’t do development without using that as a tool.”

The port’s real estate strategy has changed as the global economy has slowed. In the two years prior to announcing its deal with NYK, the port bought more than 1,000 acres of land, spending $110 million.

The owners won the right to maintain their properties, at least in the short term.  In Tacoma the port owners aggressively fought the condemnation.  However, the reality here was that the Port of Tacoma recognized there was no need and therefore no reason to spend the funds necessary to acquire. 
 

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AP

The Utah House has approved a bill that would allow the state to take federally owned land through the use of eminent domain.

Lawmakers approved the legislation 57-13 on Thursday. Republican Rep. Chris Herrod, the bill's sponsor, says the federal government violated its contract with Utah when it gained statehood by not selling the lands.

Herrod hopes to use eminent domain to take lands at the monument that have large coal reserves. Herrod says development of the reserves could help fund the state's schools.
    
The Utah Legislature simply proclaims sovereignty over federal owned land in its State. The implication of Utah’s act is that somehow it retained powers when the feds took over and accepted Utah as a member of the union.
 
One of these possessory rights maintained by Utah was not to control its own land.  The land was probably transferred to the federal government and there it sits.  

This would not be too much of a problem in most states, but Utah has the fortune of large oil and gas resources in the area owned by the federal government.

Authorizing itself the opportunity to condemn the federal government raises two questions.  First, where the devil did it get its solitude to condemn the federal land?  Second, does Utah really believe the highest and best use of the property does not include the natural resources that it is acquiring?  If someone else is acquiring in an arms-length transaction, would the owner of this luscious land not expect to be paid for all of its natural resources?  The answer is evident.  
    
Good luck with the demagoguery, Utah Legislators!

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Tennessean

With Tower's cooperation, MDHA attorneys have filed an order to that effect for Haynes to sign, though the two sides will continue to argue about the parcel's value.

Tower had challenged MDHA's eminent domain case, arguing that it was based on an incorrect determination that the land is blighted. The company also said it had development plans for the site.

MDHA responded that blight had nothing to do with the condemnation, which was based on the Metro Council directing the agency last June to acquire land for the convention center. Haynes agreed and decided not to let Tower introduce evidence supporting its claims.
As for the possibility that Tower could ultimately win an appeal and regain its right to the land after convention center construction has started, Conner acknowledged that would be "uncharted territory" but added, "That's the risk people take when they go ahead" with construction.
 

Tower’s challenge was premised upon the metro development assumption that the property owned by Tower was “blighted”.  This question of what is blight will be the key for many future fights.  If a parcel is vacant, it is hard to see why it would be blighted.  There is no requirement for an individual to redevelop.

As the appeal is on-going, Tower has taken the position that it should obtain the return of the land in case it prevails on its necessity challenge.  The community is left with little to do but move forward to a condemnation process and redevelopment.  However, one only need look at the Hathcock decision in Michigan to determine that when there is not a necessity situation courts are more than willing to allow acquisition.

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