Projects Acquiring Land Across Texas

Pipelines are the Texas eminent domain story. A company that qualifies as a common carrier may condemn an easement across private land, usually a permanent strip fifty feet wide with a temporary construction easement alongside it.

Common carrier status is not automatic. In Texas Rice Land Partners v Denbury Green Pipeline the Texas Supreme Court held that checking a box on a permit form is not enough. There must be a reasonable probability that the line will serve the public by transporting product for one or more customers who will retain ownership of it.

• Is the entity genuinely a common carrier for this line?
• Width, depth of cover, and the temporary construction easement.
• Restrictions on building, planting and crossing afterwards.
• Repair of fences, roads, terraces and drainage.
• Future line rights, and whether a second pipe can be added later.

Electric and other utilities acquire easements for distribution lines, substations and service infrastructure. The strips are usually narrower than transmission corridors, but they still restrict what can be built and where equipment can travel.

• Where poles and guy wires land relative to the working areas.
• Vegetation management rights inside the strip.
• Access routes the utility may use to reach the line.

The ERCOT transmission buildout, including the plan for 765 kV lines and the Permian Basin expansion, is moving new corridors across large parts of West and Central Texas. Routing is decided in a proceeding at the Public Utility Commission before any land is acquired.

• Landowners can participate in the routing case, which is the point at which the corridor can still move.
• Structure locations, heights and the width of the maintained strip.
• Effect on aerial application, irrigation systems and future building sites.

TxDOT acquires right of way for widenings, interchanges and new alignments. Large programmes such as the North Houston Highway Improvement Project on I 45 and I 35 Capital Express in Austin touch thousands of parcels.

• The strip taken from the frontage, and what it does to setback.
• Driveway closures, relocations and grade changes.
• New medians that remove turning movements into a site.
• Remainder shape, parking counts and circulation.

Cities, counties, water districts, river authorities and school districts acquire land for water supply, drainage, reservoirs, rail and public buildings. Reservoir projects such as Marvin Nichols in Northeast Texas can affect very large areas at once.

• Whether the acquisition is fee title or an easement.
• Permanent inundation compared with temporary construction impact.
• Effect on the remainder of the holding, not only the part taken.

Rail, telecommunications, renewable energy interconnection and other authorised entities also acquire interests in Texas land. The first question is always the same: who is asking, and what does the law let them take?

• Identify the entity and the authority it claims.
• Confirm whether it seeks fee title or an easement.
• Establish what the initial offer and appraisal actually cover.