TOPIC: BIG Problem!

Thanks for the reply Whitjr, seems pretty gloomy. I'm still hoping they might change their minds about putting the pipe in my property. What they want to do is technically illegal on a state level already, but it's possible for the feds to over ride that. Which apparently they don't mind doing in most cases with pipelines. From what I've heard no one in the area is willing to sell for various reasons, even the town owned land. So they will need to take almost their entire easement by eminent domain.

That video you pasted has been going around a lot recently

Boy is this a touchy subject for land owners! We just had a power line go through our place a couple of years ago. We own the land and mineral rights lock, stock and barrel but that didn't stop them from threatening us from the get-go. They gave us a contract and said if we didn't sign it withing a certain time the price they offered was cut in half. How's that for negotiating skills? So it was off to the lawyer we went. A year and a half later, surveyors, archaeologists, more lawyers traipsing around on our ranch (learned a lot from the archaeologists), MANY in-office visits with our lawyer ($$$/hour, $20/e-mail) and a final hearing got us a little more than what they'd originally offered but the power company had one of the three commissioners in their pocket so he kept the price down. The neighboring rancher had enough to keep fighting them for more money but we decided the law of deminishing returns would come into play pretty quickly if we kept on like our lawyer wanted us to. The only thing that altered the path of the power line were the archaeological sites and the fact they'd drawn the path of their line directly over one of our main water wells. So they moved the path over a couple of hundred yards and called it good.

So rule #1 is - get a lawyer if the price you're negotiating is anything substantial and how to determine that is pretty subjective but it would have to be in view of how much the lawyer wants in return. Property owners' rights vary from state to state but Texas is fairly friendly to us ... fairly. All in all it's been a net plus for the ranch as it opened up a new path through our place we couldn't have accessed otherwise and gave us a fresh influx of funds to make improvements the place has been needing for decades. Your story on the other had sounds much more damaging - and damning - to be so unlucky as to be in the path of one of these companies. It's almost enough to make one think of getting a chair and sitting in front of your front gate with a shotgun full of 00 buck.

If this was a power-line thing it'd be easy, there's a law in my area that forces them to buy the whole parcel. That way they'd have to give me what I need to get another parcel and restart somewhere else. The pipeline companies don't have to do that, they're going to leave me with a parcel I can't use and can't sell. Besides the fact that my house is on it and I don't want my family and I to live next to a high pressure gas line. Not only will my insurance policy cancel from the increased risk. You can't collect on the insurance if you're incinerated in a pipeline explosion anyway!

On the last part, yeah there has been lots of talk in town of doing just that. The only people in town that are for it is a well drilling company. They can't wait for all the blasting that will need to be done to make everyone's wells run dry so they can get like 25 grand a pop to redrill them all.

Geeze - sounds like they're taking everything from you. With so many in the area against it is there any way you can band together legally to go against the pipeline? Sounds like that would be the only way or team up with something like NARPO - home.earthlink.net/~dick156/ or NARLO - narlo.org/ .

How'd that happen? Do Quick Replies double your responses like that?

BillK..

I think double post like that happen when you hit the submit button more than once.

Some times it is a little slow to post.. and if you hit the submit button a second time it will double post.

I will delete the duplicate.

TNhunter

I certainly may have hit it more than once. You never know if our Internet has cratered out here in the sticks or the problem's on the other end.

Thanks.

We're on it!

Man dude, my prayers are with you. Billk, I think I'm there with you with some good ole buck! Everything you've worked for is in peril Ittiz. Keep the forum posted on your progress.

I have a similar story in my family's past. In the 40's my grandfather bought a large farm that he raised hundreds of hogs on, and made hay. At some point he bought most of the neighbor's farm also, bringing the acreage total to over 400. Then in the mid 50's the Army Corps came through and said they were going to put in a dam to control watershed, to help with flooding in Pittsburgh (150 miles downstream). They wanted 370 acres of his farm, which they said would then be underwater. They handed him a check, which he fought with them over the value, and it was a take it or take nothing offer.

Long story short, the family farm was knocked down to just 30 acres. They built the dam and the water never did reach up to his property. Now that land all around the new lake is labeled \"park land\". It is all overgrown with thorn trees and briars, what used to be his beautiful hay fields. But oh well, there was nothing that could be done.

I hope your situation fairs better than my grandfathers.