A Final FLSP Update for the Week
Eminent Domain disappears from Rep. Orr's bill and Todd Interests may already be clearing underbrush...
As I hit the link to open up the committee meeting for Culture, Recreation, and Tourism for the Texas House of Representatives yesterday morning, I was apprehensive. Just an hour earlier I was much more enthusiastic about the whole ordeal. But after finding out that HB 2332, sponsored by Representative Angelia Orr, had been changed to eliminate the eminent domain part of the bill, the part that had been touted by Orr for weeks and where the public had commented specifically on the bill pertaining to eminent domain, I was left feeling very doubtful about the future of the state park.
I have not been able to find the revised bill to link here, all I saw was a photo someone shared with me and what I heard in the meeting, but the revised bill would give power to Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPWD) to approve any Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) water use/rights changes pertaining to Big Brown Creek and Fairfield Lake itself. Now, what is this supposed to do? Well, Todd Interests, the company currently under contract with Vistra to purchase the property, has been touted as having interest in the water rights so that they can sell the water back to DFW. All of this presumably in addition to the multi-million dollar mansion subdivision and golf course situation that had also been in the news. To be clear, the building of lakes and selling water back to major cities and for more arid ag areas has been around for 60+ years in this state, and this is a subject that I could probably write more on later…but if the rumors about Todd Interests wanting the water to sell back are true, this is just the beginning of decades of water wars. I touched on this in the newsletter earlier this week.
My question is: How does this protect the state park land itself? Is the theory that Todd Interests will get scared and upset that they can’t sell the water and thus bend and give up? Is it a death by a thousand cuts? Why, if Rep Orr likely knew that some of her fellow committee members were against the idea of eminent domain (another sidebar: probably only in this instance, you never hear of these people against eminent domain with regard to development, highways, or pipelines!), did she even propose eminent domain as a tactic to begin with? I’m not trying to pick on Rep Orr here, I know she is doing her best and is trying to save the park, but I have a lot of questions and there don’t seem to be any answers. (I should note, at least one committee member owns a real estate business…)
So, I listened to the hearing, which first went through several other bills before getting to this one. Several names I know from the Facebook group stood up to give their 2-minute opinion. No one stood against eminent domain and most had to adjust their comments to include the change for TPWD to have power over TCEQ in approving water rights/use changes. And that was it. The testimony was over, the committee meeting adjourned, and the bill left pending in committee.
I expected more, I suppose. And to be honest, I am new to all of this. It’s been an interesting learning curve. I vote in every election (local, too), I stay informed as much as possible about what’s going on around me, I’m active in several volunteer organizations, but knowing the goings on about how bills are proposed, the process of how they get out of committee and into the rest of the Senate and House (both on a state and federal level) wasn’t a process I was that familiar with other than understanding what I knew from classes in school. Knowing I can listen into committee meetings is amazing and I have already found a couple of committees I want to keep an eye on. I will say, from my meager experience there do not seem to very many science informed elected officials. And that’s a damn shame.
My own thoughts about the bill as revised is that to me, it has no tooth. Todd Interests could easily shrug and say they aren’t going to sell the water rights, go ahead and develop the entire property, and then 5-10 years later sell the water rights. There would be no state park left and the state would be left empty handed anyway and why would TPWD care at that point if there is no state park to protect? There’s something missing in the whole story.
What’s next? I guess keep an eye on HB 2332 and the companion SB 1656 that Senator Schwertner is putting forth for eminent domain. Keep contacting your representatives. Keep documenting.
The last note is that I am hearing from several people that Todd Interests is already clearing underbrush in several areas in the park. At first I thought perhaps it was just the cleared areas the state park had done at a few key points along the north end of the park near the lake, which I had seen in November and in February. But this seems to be different and was verified by a report posted by Spectrum News in which the current state park manager said it was the prospective owner doing the clearing. I believe several folks are going out to document what has been cleared. If I can find a valid link to share the news video I’ll update this post. All I have is someone’s Facebook video and I would prefer to send a YouTube or actual news site link.
I’m going into the weekend less optimistic than I was a couple of weeks ago, though the fight continues. Unless something drastic changes in the next week, I’ll be taking a break from this topic for a post or two!
In struggles ranging from the Trans-Pecos pipeline to TPWD’s effort to reign in the use of gasoline by rattlesnake roundups, to the “border wall” and the National Butterfly Center, I’ve become more cynical and I don’t want to be. But I hate losing over and over. So eminent domain just disappeared as a possibility, huh? Imagine that. It worked pretty smoothly when wielded by Energy Transfer Partners in the Trans-Pecos.