By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor
About 95 percent of Texas land is privately-owned. And the Lone Star State’s long heritage of protecting private property rights is touted by individuals and politicians alike.
But as many landowners have found, eminent domain authority is often used by private companies.
Landowners are often treated unfairly in these situations. Tales of lost production, property damage and deception are rampant.
Harold Pullins
Walker County
It’s mid-March. The pasture should be in prime grazing condition. But instead, it’s a mess of mud, water-filled ruts, piles of mulched trees, railroad ties and cast-off pipes.
“That’s 50 feet right through the middle of my property that’s good for nothing now,” Harold Pullins said, surveying the avenue of mud cutting across his land. “I couldn’t plant anything with this mess out here, and now I’m having to buy hay. And hay’s scarce right now. I’m paying an arm and a leg for it.”
In January 2018, an oil and gas company representative approached Pullins. The company would be building a pipeline through Walker County, he said, and Pullins’ entire property was in the planned construction path. The landman said they’d be in touch.
Then, in March, a letter arrived via certified mail. The oil and gas company said they had “determined it is in the public interest and necessary to acquire certain permanent and temporary access easement rights” to build the pipeline.
The letter concluded with a “final written offer” of $11,682 and vaguely threatened court proceedings if the offer was not accepted.
Pullins was infuriated.
He and his wife feel strongly they were offered such a low sum because of their age.
“I’m 81 years old. My wife is 80 years old,” he said. “They just figured they’d take advantage of you; figured, ‘$11,000, he’ll jump at that.’ Well, I got news for them. It takes a whole lot more zeroes than that.”
It was especially insulting, Pullins said, because the company stands to make substantial money from the petroleum products flowing through the pipeline.
“I’m not against progress. But, you know, be fair about it. They’re going to make millions of dollars off this line,” he said. “They made me a ridiculous $11,000 offer to mess my place up like this. It’s unbelievable.”
They hired an attorney, and negotiations began with the pipeline company. But construction started anyway.
Heavy machinery was operated with a disregard for property, Pullins said. Several deer stands were knocked over, and swaths of old pine trees were clear-cut. Yards of barbed wire cross-fencing were torn down and left lying in a jumbled heap. A large water tank was pumped, killing all the fish.
After pumping out the tank, the company laid down railroad ties to make a roadway for their machinery. They widened the tank without Pullins’ permission, and when it rained and the tank filled up and their roadway was submerged, workers began pumping water off the easement onto other parts of his property.
“They did whatever they wanted to do.They thought it was a joke, I guess, but I worked hard to pay for this place,” Pullins said.
After the right-of-way was constructed, heavy machinery constantly traversed the roadway during the hot, dry summer. Clouds of dust billowed across his property and toward his home.
According to Pullins, the construction company never watered the road to keep dust down, despite driving a large water truck back and forth to where their employees were working.
Pullins, who suffers from emphysema, had to stay inside. The thick, choking dust worsened his breathing problems.
His livestock suffered, too.
Relief only came when the drought broke and rain returned to the area.
But soon, the rain was causing just as many problems as the dust.
“They’ve wrecked my place for … it’s been over a year now. And I don’t know when they’ll get done with it, but it’s just been a mess,” Pullins said. “This summer, when it was dry, it was all dust. Now, it’s all mud.”
The earth, stripped of proper ground cover, is eroded and washed out, pockmarked with tire tracks and gouges from drilling machinery.
A discarded industrial-sized drain hose lies in the field nearby, evidence of the company pumping water away from the easement, a claim they deny.
Pullins said the des
Pipelines are nothing for what is coming to Texas, unless we act now. Greenway groups working together with out-state organizations are working to take our creeks, rivers and streams and the land next to them for pubic parks and trails, turning private property into pubic restrooms and public access to private property, which of course brings crime, theft and trash.
Underestimating these groups will be fatal to Texas as we know it.
This can’t be the Texas I grew up in but here we go again Politics but remember one man one vote so use it
Other states do it differently — and more fairly — and still build roads, highways, and pipelines.”
The landowner is never made truly whole financially. In Texas, there is no penalty for making lowball offers. And if the landowner doesn’t want to take the fraction of the fair market value that is offered, he/she has to pay for their own attorney. If they fight all the way through court and a jury finds that TxDoT or the pipeline company didn’t even try to make a good faith offer, the landowner pays his/her attorneys out of the award — which means that they get 1/3 to ½ less than the actual fair market value of the property that was taken. Which means that the pipeline companies have a huge incentive to do lowballs and string out the process, because they lose nothing and can effectively force most landowners to take much less than they really should get.
Having a pipeline on the property affects the property values of the entire piece of land because there are many people who don’t want to buy land with a pipeline on it (the risk of spills, the lack of control over what happens with that section of that property, the need to structure your fences and gates to allow constant access). But we will not get compensated for that.
We also won’t get compensated for not being able to use about ¼ of our property while the pipeline is getting built. And they can take up to 2 years to build it, without paying a dime for that. (They pay for the area they actually build on, but not for the larger area that we are unable to use because they have cut the fences and we’re unable to re-fence until they are done)
Theoretically, they are liable for damages caused during the construction. In practice, it is extremely difficult to get any compensation. And since we have NO right to tell them to get off our property, we can’t actually stop them from leaving trash and barb wire on the ground, or from tearing up the pastures outside the designated work area by taking four wheelers through muddy turf and destroying it.
Pipelines are even worse than highways because there’s no public process. TxDot has to hold public meetings where people can talk about the pros and cons about different possible routes, increasing the chances that the decision is actually in the public interest. With pipelines, a private, for-profit company simply decides where it wants to build a pipeline and hands you a piece of paper saying they’re taking that land. No consideration as to whether there is another route that would affect fewer people, or less critical resources, or have less of a chance of water pollution (the route they’ve picked here threatens the local creeks).
And those are just some of the problems. Roads and pipelines can get built in ways that provide fair process and compensation for landowners, as shown in other states – but Texas values the oil companies’ profits and agency convenience more.
I have two pipe line on two properties. You don’t mean anything to them. They know they can run over you. I spent 40 thousand to combat them only to get minimal concessions. they have all the aces and they know it . They need a reality check . they get to make millions at our expense. leaving us property worth less and costing the land owner .
John Ballard
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