Does Texas actually care about its land? - Revisited
Texas Parks and Wildlife withdrew their eminent domain pursuits for Fairfield Lake State Park yesterday, so where does that leave us going forward?
Yesterday, Texas Parks and Wildlife retracted their pursuit of reclaiming Fairfield Lake State Park and the additional property via eminent domain and will not be appealing the recent eminent domain commission valuation that was an egregious 4x the purchase price from June of this year. The park is lost for good now, as I stated in my post three weeks ago. I thought I was being dramatic when I wrote it but I knew in my gut, even then.
On February 15th of this year, I wrote Does Texas actually care about its land? in response to the news that Fairfield Lake State Park was going to close because it was being bought by Dallas developer Todd Interests. I’ve thought about a lot of things I wrote in that post many times over the last nearly 10 months since the news broke. Was I too harsh? What did we not know then that we know now? Some of the things I wrote then are still things being parroted today by anti-park folks so I cringe when I read some of it. But we had so little information at the start! We could only piece together what was written through a couple of news articles and had to rely on what our representatives were saying. Information was so unorganized and incomplete and it wasn’t until we started asking questions, doing our own digging, and getting open records requests did our perspectives change.
So, yes, I would probably retract some of what I said if I knew then what I know now. But some things still stand.
I still don’t know that Texas actually cares about its land.
The passing of Prop 14 in November suggests Texans overwhelmingly want more public lands. But there’s still a very strong contingency within our statehouse and within the public that is clinging steadfastly to the mythos of private property rights in this state. I’ve read all sorts of things from people coming in to troll in the public Facebook group as well as on various news agency posts. So much misinformation being spread mingled in with everyone’s stinky opinions. At some point you toss your hands in the air and realize you can’t correct everyone and half of them don’t care what you have to say anyway, but a not insignificant portion of those people don’t even care about public lands. They’ve got theirs and don’t want to share.
The state did fumble this. But not in the way the anti-park crowd says in their knee-jerk replies at the bottom of internet comment sections. They use that wording as a means to punish the government, and by proximity, the rest of the public, condemning the wildlife in the process. My reasoning for saying so is different. I don’t want punishment. I want answers.
Many of us carried a lot of water (by our own volition) for Texas Parks and Wildlife, mostly because they weren’t doing any of the publicity that needed to happen to counteract a developer with connections to the Dallas Morning News and with a lot of money to hire a PR firm to shape their image. We talked amongst ourselves often on how much we were willing be TPWD cheerleaders and it always came down to being there to support the park and the land itself, as well as the overall ethical implications of destroying a piece of public land (leased or not) for a development for the 1%. It was about going the distance for the park itself, not an agency. My last essay invoked the Lorax speaking for the trees, and that was how I felt. No one else was going to stand up for the flora and fauna and that’s what I was doing, it’s why I personally stayed with it. (And yes, many others also stood up, too, for the wildlife, but I don’t want to speak for them and their reasons behind doing so here.)
As for the publicity aspect, you have to remember that the people behind the agencies are public servants. They aren’t elected officials who can show up on a tv or radio talk show and spout off opinions. Every time we were frustrated with the lack of counter response to the onslaught of negative attention coming from the developer, we had to remember TPWD was a public agency and not a singular elected official who was free to speak about anything they wanted. That was difficult to deal with and frankly a detriment to how public opinion was shaped about the agency during the last 10 months. And it looks even worse now with the headlines coming out about the park.
Texas abandons efforts to seize former state park through eminent domain
Texas Parks and Wildlife will no longer seek acquisition of Fairfield Lake State Park land
TPWD won't take Fairfield Lake State Park land from Todd Interests
Texas backs out of effort to save Fairfield Lake State Park through eminent domain
Texas drops eminent domain effort to seize Fairfield Lake property from developer
Texas will no longer try to seize former Fairfield Lake State Park site through eminent domain
State halts efforts to take Fairfield Lake property from developer using eminent domain
Abandons. No Longer Seek. Won’t. Backs Out. Drops. Halts.
It’s not a good look.
To be fair, the press is to blame for this too. The majority of them dropped the ball on any kind of truly investigative work on this and catered to the spin of the developer, especially the FWST and DMN. Others just grabbed headlines and regurgitated the same paragraphs into yet another story, often using old information when new facts had emerged.
While I don’t want to blame anyone within the agency, there are several things I do wish had happened between 2018 and 2022 when they knew the park could potentially be lost. There were some news articles out during this time, as we found out quickly last February, but not widespread enough to really cause a panic with anyone throughout the state. Or at least a panic that spread beyond environmental orgs who might have been paying attention. This was something that should have been shouted from the rooftops and I could only wish they would have blatantly stated that we needed to be petitioning the legislature to allocate funding to purchase the property. That just never happened and so it all hinged on hoping Vistra would find a new landowner willing to let the state continue to lease the park or that Vistra would miraculously change their mind about not subdividing the tract so the state could only purchase the state park. Much more visibility was needed. That and I have no idea how much real pressure was used by the previous Executive Director and the TPW Commission to Governor Abbott about this. When all else fails, blame the person at the top, correct?
Beyond the agency, local and state representatives should also have been shouting from the rooftops about this, too. Freestone county commissioners have continuously played a blame game with TPWD over this to deflect their own hand in what has happened this year. It certainly seems to me that if I was an elected official in a county with a state park that drew in a significant amount of visitors that boosted the local economy, I might have a vested interest in seeing that park succeed. The commissioners blasted TPWD for lack of communication, rightly or not, but I’ve yet to see where the commissioners did their own legwork in trying to secure the park in a government to government joint effort. There’s a lot more to that situation that I cannot elaborate on right now but suffice to say, someone with legal authority should look into all of that.
Beyond the hyper-local, the legislature was utterly useless. I’ll drag a quote back out from my original post. This one is from Senator Charles Perry in District 28.
“I have said repeatedly, Texas cannot lose a state park to development. Fairfield Lake State Park is a treasure that Texas residents have been visiting for 47 years to experience its beauty and recreational activities. The park cannot be replaced. 80,000 hardworking Texans will lose a place of solitude, sport fishing, and priceless memory making if the park is closed. We must make every effort possible to keep the land as a state park.”
-Senator Charles Perry, Chairman of the Senate Water, Agriculture, & Rural Affairs Committee
“The park cannot be replaced.” Hmm, that’s very interesting. “We must make every effort possible to keep the land as a state park.” Wow. Super fascinating, Senator Perry, considering your committee blocked Representative Orr’s bill when it reached the committee! And come to find out you had already met with Mr. Todd back in December 2022 to discuss—wait for it—the water rights! This last bit of information came out in the eminent domain valuation hearing in November, from Shawn Todd himself. I’m trying to get the court report so I can have an actual account of what he said to quote it here and I’ll add that in at a later date. But several eyewitnesses at the hearing have relayed this information to us.
And then Senator Perry had the audacity to say in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, after the valuation hearing:
“The $400 million price tag would not be something the fund could support and meet the intent of the legislature,” Perry said in a text message response to questions. “Thus, the $400 million price is greater than is available today.”
*the fund mentioned referring to Prop 14. The legislature had allocated $125 million just for Fairfield Lake State Park as a separate set of money during the regular session last spring.
Let me drag out one more quote from my original post:
“Today’s heartbreaking announcement of the closing of Fairfield Lake State Park is a tremendous loss for Freestone County and all Texans who enjoy our state’s unique parklands. It is unfortunate that Vistra and this private developer were unable to come to an agreement that would have allowed the state of Texas to purchase the park from Vistra to maintain it for future generations of Texans.”
-Senator Charles Schwertner, Senate District 5
Senator Schwertner also proposed an eminent domain bill alongside Representative Orr’s first version of her bill, which was also an eminent domain bill, later changed to a water bill. Senator Schwertner’s never even saw the light of his own committee, thus it never passed through the Senate floor and on to the House for voting. It was proposed and just sat there, dying a sad little death. Don’t worry, Senator Schwertner did get to use it as means to campaign though, sending emails to people who’d signed up for his newsletter to stay updated on the state park efforts, dangling that carrot of his proposed bill as a means for you to stay engaged with his campaign. It was worded so that it seemed it was moving forward and something was happening, so much so that I ended up calling his Austin office to find out what was going on. I did appreciate the staffer who let me forward the email I’d received and was glad when she confirmed it wasn’t from their office but from his campaign. As we said in the 90s, "PSYCH! Just Kidding.” Thanks for nothing, Senator Schwertner.
Looking back on this quote though, I can’t help but wonder what was even done by Senator Schwertner, a representative of the state from that region, to aid in negotiations between the agency and Vistra well before all of this went down. It certainly seems like the agency was left to flounder for itself in all of this. Which, when you (the legislature) don’t properly fund the agency to support itself anyway, how do you expect them to really negotiate with an energy conglomerate? Is this a feature not a bug situation?
While we’re mentioning Vistra, they somehow managed to wrangle themselves out of this situation after mid-spring. In reality a lot of light should be shining on them and their inability to work with the state to negotiate the purchase of the park, especially when their predecessors intentionally approached the state back in the 70s to create a state park on the property, a gesture of goodwill for all the polluting they would be doing and a lucky tax incentive, too. What did Vistra know about the potential to sell water from the lake and aquifer when they listed the property for sale? How did their connection to renting their offices in a building that Todd Interests owns shape the sale of the property? Who was invested in this project at Vistra or is Vistra as a company invested in this project somehow? What was the offer price from the other two buyers who wanted to purchase the property? How did locals in Freestone county who worked at the Big Brown power plant influence the purchase of the property by the developer? There are so many unanswered questions from Vistra and they’ve just hightailed it out of any scrutiny.
To circle around back to our elected officials, I’m going to share one last quote from an staffer in state Senator Donna Campbell’s office. This is being shared with permission by the constituent who wrote in to her office and is a response to outreach efforts in the last couple of weeks to push TPWD to appeal the valuation.
Good morning,
I apologize for my delay, but my best contact for assistance with issues at Parks was out sick. I had not heard about this matter and was surprised to hear that a state park was not government property. I am told that the appraisal committee determined that the value is $418 million. This probably includes the future development potential. The TPWD Commission could appeal the value by 12/11 but they are only authorized to spend $125 million and would still have to rebuild demolished infrastructure. TPWD is responsible for Mr. Todd's legal fees because this was an eminent domain challenge. The taxpayers of Texas will have to pay those extensive fees whether Parks appeals the valuation. Prolonging the process will add more costs with not much chance of cutting the appraisal in fourths so the state could exercise eminent domain. Thankfully, there are only two parks that are privately owned, one of which was Fairfield. There are other parks owned by partner, but they are with governmental entities like the Corps of Engineers. The other park is Colorado City it is also owned by Vistra. Parks is in negotiations to buy that one currently. The only incentive the State has over Mr. Todd is that he likely can't borrow money but is not required to stop construction otherwise. I am so sorry but I don't believe there is any action we can take that will get Lake Fairfield Park back. I'm so sorry!
Kelly Donegan Follis
Part-Time District Office Caseworker
(Mon-Wed, 8:30 to 4:30; Thurs, 8:30 to 2:30)
Senator Donna Campbell, M.D.
229 Hunters Village, Suite 105
New Braunfels, Texas 78132
830.626.0065
So many articles written about the state park and this staffer had no idea what was going on? Did Senator Campbell know? What? Again, if we’re talking about the state failing, let’s talk about The State Failing. Because it certainly wasn’t only on TPWD’s head. But I think hidden in this language is the truth that was probably known months ago—if Shawn Todd wasn’t going to accept the two offers of $103 million the state gave him back in the summer before filing to condemn in court, this was a lost cause from the beginning. And the developer knew this, which is why they began bulldozing immediately because as you clear habitat and remove infrastructure the cost of getting the state park back isn’t merely just paying the $103 million for the property. It’s the millions more in rebuilding everything, habitat rehabilitation, legal fees, etc. And this is where I get angry because the legislature set them up to fail from the beginning.
Texas failed Texans.
Yesterday was a bad news day for conservation. The TPWD statement was depressing and at the same time environmental advocates in Florida were attending a Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting to give opinions about releasing conservation easements on Split Oak Forest Wildlife and Environmental Area in central Florida, near Orlando. An acquaintance of mine has been working on this project to save Split Oak Forest for four years as a toll road is being proposed to go through part of the property. This property was a mitigation area turned conservation land open to the public and was supposed to be in preserved in perpetuity. FWC opted to vote to release those conservation easements and work with negotiating with the counties involved and the toll road developer. A loss for conservation.
One minor miracle someone told me yesterday, though I’m having trouble finding a news story about it (found the news release from Bayou Land Conservancy here) is that the Lake Creek Preserve pipeline I wrote about in May is not going to be going through the Preserve at this time. *phew* That brightened my day a smidge yesterday and I will have to get out to that property to hike, soon.
Two things I’ll leave you with for today.
The first is
’s essay I Remember Texas. It’s a must-read and goes hand in hand with what I’ve written here.The second is this gem that was circulating on BlueSky and other social media the other day.
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and can be found on Instagram at @oceanicwilderness. She hosts two podcasts, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and The Garden Path Podcast.
The Fairfield Lake debacle is just another chapter in the sordid history of TPWD's negligent stewardship of Texas parks, and open lands generally. Texas, with the second-biggest population of any state, has less acreage devoted to public parks than almost any other. The situation will only worsen, notwithstanding the constitutional amendment the voters overwhelmingly approved last month
Thanks for your work trying to educate and motivate us about these issues
And those small towns will become veritable ghost towns alongside the off ramps to the new shopping malls and developments that will spring up along the new freeways. All of this will destroy any lands left of the once natural habitat of Texas wildlife. And the shopping malls themselves often die a slow death of unfounded need. It takes less than a generation for such massive destruction when the people are kept uneducated and out of the process. It is hard to see the big picture when you are born into it and believing it must be the way of 'progress'.