Wyoming Landowner Group Seeks Protection
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.
