Not if she can help it...

We've told you about Eleanor Fairchild.  She is the one who was arrested with Daryl Hannah, ON HER OWN PROPERTY.

Read the latest in the FW Weekly.  Don't think it can't happen to YOU or your great grandmother.  This is Texas, sadly, it happens every day.  Though this time it's a Canadian company taking her land.

“I called the soil conservation people at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but they said they had no jurisdiction. I called TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality), and they said they couldn’t do anything about erosion. I called the Railroad Commission, and they said they only gave out pipeline permits but have no jurisdiction over them. I called everybody — the Department of Transportation pipeline safety people, the Army Corps of Engineers — who gave the permit to TransCanada to cross my creek and got no response. Even the EPA said they couldn’t do anything until there is a spill.”

“I’ve learned that our government is not there to help us — not when you’re fighting the big guys,” she said. “I think I’ll be an activist for the rest of my life so that others don’t have to go through the same thing.”

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When will 820 be complete?

Better yet, what's it going to cost YOU?

Those lanes in the center of the picture above are what the new "managed lanes" will look like.  What is a "managed lane"?  Read it and weep...

Managed lanes are toll lanes in the middle of an existing freeway, unlike traditional turnpikes that are brand new roads where every lane is tolled. Congestion pricing is where the toll rate varies based on the level of traffic using the road. If the speed of traffic slows below 50 MPH, Cintra can hike the toll rates for the purpose of bumping cars out of the lanes in order to guarantee a speed of 50 MPH. So the price of the toll varies based on the time of day.

Since it costs so much to drive in those lanes, people can't afford it.  So what is the Spanish company that owns them doing?  Partnering with people like the NCTCOG to use taxpayer dollars and make commercials.  Not to worry, they say it's "educational". 

Where does Texas rank in schools again?

Pay attention, people. 

See the article on the Cintra commercials here.  And here's a good take on the Terri Hall meeting from last week. 

Notice the names of the players never change. 

TxDOT and the North Texas Council of Governments (NTCOG) and its Regional Transportation Council have been promoting the contest using taxpayer resources. Amanda Wilson, Communications Supervisor for the Transportation Division of the NTCOG said the contest is also “an educational effort, not just naming the lanes.”

Still don't believe it?  Check out the North Tarrant Express site.  Read between the lines.  You'll see it.

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A "culture of deviance"

Sound familiar? 

These are the boys up north, in Canada, that are taking land from Texans.  They sound like the ones that are already here...


Occupy Canada

October 1st - A TransCanada pipeline engineer, the man responsible for ensuring that pipelines were constructed safely, has come forward with shocking information about TransCanada’s unscrupulous safety practices. In his own words: "Someone is going die and they just don't know it yet."

"Drawing on examples from the records of Enbridge and Kinder Morgan, Vokes is going public with his concerns about an industry facing unprecedented growth and what even the National Energy Board (NEB) describes as "an increased trend in the number and the severity" of pipeline incidents.

Vokes has stellar company. In particular, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has accused Enbridge, a Canadian company jointly regulated by the NEB and the U.S. Pipeline Hazardous Materials Standard Administration (PHMSA), of nurturing a "culture of deviance" on safety and integrity issues after a dramatic Michigan pipeline rupture in 2010. That debacle caused the largest and most expensive onshore oil spill in U.S. history.

In addition to "multiple findings of non-compliance and non-conformance" with regulations, the NEB also documented that Enbridge didn't have a process for "defining and evaluating the level of qualification and competence of contractors and consultants."

The company also didn't know how valid and effective its assessments of corrosion and cracking were in its pipeline safety program."
 http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/10/01/Cracks-In-Pipeline-System/

-- Kris

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Daughter of Texas Fights For Her Land Against TransCanada

A daughter of Texas is standing up to a foreign corporation that has come to take her land by force.

Julia Trigg Crawford manages the farm her grandfather bought in 1948 near Direct, TX south of the Red River. Last year a Canadian pipeline company called TransCanada told Julia Trigg and her family that a portion of their land would be taken by eminent domain so that the Keystone XL pipeline could be built across it.

Join us at a hearing in Austin on Monday July 23rd and demand that Texas legislators protect private property. (For more details email contact@wetexans.com)

You have the power to stand with Julia Trigg and to tell elected officials that private foreign corporations should NOT be able to take private property from its rightful owner.

Julia Trigg will face off with TransCanada in court next month. But right now the Land & Resource Management Committee of the Texas House of Representatives is getting ready to meet and discuss what steps our legislature should take to protect landowners.

While this is a positive step, the pipeline industry will be working to convince members of the committee and other legislators they should be given broad powers to take land from private citizens.

Legislators need to hear from you – let them know that pipeline companies have been abusing eminent domain for far too long and Texans aren’t going to stand for it any longer.

Did you know that until last year pipeline companies in Texas could take private property without ANY oversight whatsoever? If a pipeline company claimed it had the right to use eminent domain there was nothing a landowner could do except wait for the land to be taken and then file a lawsuit. Very few property owners have the resources to fight a legal battle with major pipeline companies, so the pipelines almost always won out-of-court settlements that allowed them to take the land.

But in 2011 the Texas Supreme Court struck down this abusive practice in the landmark Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green Pipelines decision. The court seemed appalled that this was going on, saying “Private property cannot be imperiled with such nonchalance, via an irrefutable presumption created by checking a certain box on a one-page government form. Our Constitution demands far more.”

Join us in Austin, make your voices heard, and let’s give power back to property owners! (Again, for more details email contact@wetexans.com)

As always, thank you for your support!
Calvin Tillman
Former Mayor, DISH, TX
(940) 453-3640

"Those who say it can not be done, should get out of the way of those that are doing it"

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WHO's land is it?

Find out in the FW Weekly. 

What will YOU do when they want yours?

But TransCanada wouldn’t do that. The firm, hired to move tar sands bitumen — a mix of sand, clay, and water saturated with an extremely dense petroleum — from Alberta, Canada, to the Houston refineries along what’s been dubbed the Keystone Pipeline XL, upped its offer on the easement a couple of times between 2008 and 2011 from $7,000 to $21,000. When the Crawfords continued to say they weren’t interested, TransCanada went ahead and condemned the land it wanted in September 2011.

Since then, the two parties have been in a legal wrestling match pitting the Crawfords — farm manager Julia Trigg Crawford, her younger brother and sister, and their dad — against a multinational billion-dollar corporation that claims the right to take, by eminent domain if necessary, any land they want to lay pipe on.

It’s the latest version of the David and Goliath story that has already affected thousands of Texans who’ve been steamrolled by the natural gas industry. But this version goes beyond the usual pipeline land-grabs, because it involves a company taking property years before it will obtain a permit to lay the pipe — a company that may not be in compliance with Texas law and therefore may not have the legal right to take anything.

Despite those questions, TransCanada has been involved in at least 89 eminent domain land seizures in Texas alone. The fight involves the issue of which government agency, if any, oversees pipeline companies and their use of eminent domain. Landowners are asking why there is nothing in state law to make a company show the need for a new pipeline before it is allowed to seize private lands — and why individual landowners are having to go to court to thrash out issues that they believe should be covered by state law and public policy.

It’s an issue that seems designed to make Texans, with their love of the land, stand up and shout for answers. But few have. Oil and gas companies, as well as the pipeline companies, generally get to do pretty much as they like here, and even the people who know they can fight also realize they have little chance against companies that can hire lawyers by the carload and drag out lawsuits for years.

In this state, pipeline companies have been turned down only once in more than a hundred years, in taking land by eminent domain. And perhaps the most difficult part of fighting the pipeline companies is that the moment they file to condemn your property through eminent domain, they are considered to own the easement that’s been condemned and have the right to begin laying pipe. That’s a tough hurdle even for a landowner with deep pockets.

The Crawfords are one of a handful of families trying to fight back. They simply don’t want any of their land used for an easement for a pipeline that could rupture and ruin Bois d’Arc Creek, one of their farm’s primary water sources. They don’t want the Caddo Indian artifacts that lie just beneath the surface disturbed. They don’t want to say “How high?” just because a company demands they jump for private profit. For the Crawfords, it’s not about getting a better financial settlement from TransCanada in exchange for allowing them to lay their pipe: It’s about principle.

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