Posted on 03/19/2005 12:01:14 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Listen to proponents, and the Trans Texas Corridor sounds like the greatest thing since sliced bread. Talk to opponents, however—including many rural Texans—and that sliced bread has turned stale and moldy, way past the time it needs thrown out.
Proponents say the Trans Texas Corridor will allow for much faster and safer transportation of people and freight. It will relieve Texas' congested roadways, fed by Texas' booming population—21 million residents today projected to rise to 50 million over the next few decades—and the exchange of goods with Mexico that has been accelerated since 1994 by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Proponents say it will keep hazardous materials out of populated areas. It will keep Texas' economy vibrant by creating new markets and jobs. The Trans Texas Corridor plan, proponents maintain, utilizes innovative and fiscally sound funding methods that will allow the state to construct the system with a minimal expenditure of public money, as outlined in Proposition 15, approved by Texas voters, Nov. 6, 2001. The TTC will provide "choice" to travelers. There are a litany of reasons proponents cite for building the controversial Trans Texas Corridor.
Hogwash, say Texans who are among the mounting opposition finding flaws in these arguments. In some cases, they insist the exact opposite is true. Texas Farm Bureau's primary concern, however, is its impact on agriculture and landowners.
"We now know all we need to know to understand that rural Texans will once again give up the most to see this huge project completed. Though the state has the power to take prime farm and ranch land all the way up and down the proposed corridor's path, we believe doing so would be misusing that power," said Texas Farm Bureau President Kenneth Dierschke, in an editorial in the Feb. 4, 2005 issue of Texas Agriculture. "The state has the power to take land for these rights-of-way, through eminent domain, but should this be done? Have other alternatives been adequately explored? We don't think we yet have answers to all the questions surrounding the TTC. It's a big project, with a big price tag and large consequences."
Texas Farm Bureau has registered its opposition in a number of forums. In February, TFB State Director Albert Thompson testified on behalf of the state's largest general farm organization during a Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security hearing on the massive transportation project. Thompson, a cow/calf producer and timber owner from Martinsville, told lawmakers TFB would like to see the corridor concept scrapped and future highway planning put under the auspices of the state legislature.
"Texas Farm Bureau believes the first option for new roads and highways construction should be to use current rights-of-way," Thompson told lawmakers.
Thompson also pointed out negative effects on wildlife and hunting in many areas of the state where hunting has become a major part of farm income.
TFB's Kenneth Dierschke added, "Then there's the question of paying highway taxes for roads, and then paying again in the form of tolls on many of the new proposed roadways in the TTC plan. That approach has many Texans concerned, and Farm Bureau members are no different."
Cintra, with headquarters in Madrid, Spain, along with San Antonio's Zachry Construction Corp. and other minority partners, has landed the contract to build the first stretch of the TTC that will parallel I-35, from Dallas to San Antonio. Across North America, private companies such as Cintra are spending billions of dollars to build roads in exchange for the right to collect tolls for 50 to 100 years.
In May 2004, Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson, Governor Perry's point man on the Trans Texas Corridor, said, "It's either toll roads, slow roads or no roads." But Bell County Commissioner Richard Cortese doesn't believe for a minute that Cintra will be able to recover its $7.2 billion for construction without some help from taxpayers. According to Cortese, the deal they have with the State of Texas calls for "shadow tolling."
"In other words, they will toll cars that don't actually exist and the state will subsidize Cintra until it makes a profit," he explains.
Citing Section 370.172 (d), which states, "Tolls, fees, fares, or other usage charges are not subject to supervision or regulation by any agency of this state or another governmental entity," Cedric Popp, a Wharton County farmer and Farm Bureau member, wonders who is actually in charge.
Popp strongly objects to Sec. 370.172 (a) (2) of H.B. 3588 that grants an authority the power to take private property for commercial development.
"This country was founded on the principles of free enterprise and private ownership. The right of eminent domain was granted to the state by the people to ensure an adequate transportation and utility infrastructure. That right does not extend to the seizing of private property for profit," Popp argues.
Popp has attended several TTC hearings. He has circulated petitions opposing the Corridor and has presented those to elected officials. He has also written many letters to lawmakers and to newspaper editors to elevate public awareness.
Linda Stall of Fayetteville, co-founder with her husband, David, of Corridor Watch, which monitors the project and claims a multitude of members in 133 of Texas' 254 counties, said the proprietary information of the contractor allows Cintra and the state to negotiate privately, with details to be made public only after the agreement is signed.
"For the public, the only indication of the possible parameters of that agreement are those in the law," says Stall. "The law clearly allows taking of additional land by eminent domain for 'ancillary facilities' described as any unrelated commercial or agricultural use that benefits the corridor, as well as another section which allows billboards, hotels, restaurants and gas stations...Regardless of what TxDOT wants or doesn't want, they are developing a contract with a corporation that is in this for its profit making potential, and the profit making potential lies in the full exploitation of what the law will allow, not just collecting tolls."
Rick Wegwerth of Robinson, who attended the Feb. 24, 2005 TTC hearing in McLennan County, and has spearheaded local opposition, is puzzled at how H.B. 3588 slipped by lawmakers in the last legislative session.
"I am a citizen concerned about a $186 billion bill, passed on a voice vote between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. that gives a Spanish company a 50 year monopoly and also gives them `quick obtain' for property, avoiding normal procedures for obtaining property under land acquired for highway use," says Wegwerth, who applied for a position on the Trans Texas Corridor advisory committee, which sought applications through March 14, 2005. "When a senator tells me he voted for it and now says he had no idea what he voted for, we do have a problem!"
Dennis Huber of Seguin, a Guadalupe County Farm Bureau director, runs a grain business, and owns property close to FM 220. It isn't just farmers with large plots of fragmented land that will be hurt, but also some small operators, Huber noted. One proposed path of the State Highway 130 portion of the TTC-35 project would impact Huber and his family. He said it won't cut it his property in half, but it would take just enough land to make the rest useless.
"My son has a $300,000 home, extensive pens and ponds, and improved grasses on 120 acres. If they take 20 or 30 acres out of it, economically, he can't run cattle on it," said Huber. "There is no underground water. It will take some ponds, so he'd lose his water source. This corridor can take a small place and make it too small to be economically viable."
Huber said Guadalupe County landowners are up in arms, and that at one local meeting he attended, when TxDOT first rolled out the TTC concept, a representative of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, local officials and presenters "talking up" Highway 130 were booed off the stage. Huber said that he and other landowners will be protesting the project at the March 22 TTC meeting in Seguin. He will be joined by Mel Grones, Guadalupe County Farm Bureau vice president.
"The agriculture people are against it 100 percent," said Grones. "I'm also concerned about water rights and mineral rights. Once they secure the right of way, will they claim all that too? There is speculation that they are really after our water. I don't know if that's true or just gossip, but we have lots of questions. What worries me most, is they sent a contractor out to one of these meetings, and he sounded like it's a done deal already."
Three of the four proposed corridors in the overall plan target Lee County, which has folks there upset. One goes through the eastern portion of the county, then travels through the city of Giddings. A wider track goes through the west side of Highway 77, traveling through the county. A third proposed path catches the far west corner of Lee County.
In February, four Kerr County residents — Sharon Spenrath, Nelda Sharringhausen, Susan Heffington and Bill Reese—addressed their commissioners' court concerning economics, water, private property, the state's competition with private enterprise, international control of activities and income from the Trans Texas Corridor, and urged them to issue a resolution opposing the project. Grassroots efforts like this one have resulted in opposing resolutions in many counties—Fayette, Wharton, McLennan, and Mason, to name a few.
One Republican county commissioner who opposes the corridor pointed out that a plank in the Texas Republican Party platform, drafted in June 2004, called for a repeal of H.B. 3588. "Issues of confiscation of private land, State and National sovereignty and other similar concerns," gave some party leaders heartburn. The document goes on to say, "Further, we urge the removal of all authorization and powers granted the Texas Transportation Commission and the Texas Department of Transportation for the construction and operation of the Trans Texas Corridor." This being the case, this elected official wonders why state lawmakers of that political persuasion are reluctant to publicly criticize the project, although privately, they say they don't like it.
State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican from Brenham, seems undaunted. In February, Kolkhorst introduced H.B. 1273, an amendment that would limit the width of the corridor to 800 feet and would require accessibility at each intersection of a highway or turnpike of the Trans Texas Corridor and a state highway or farm-to-market road. The bill would also put TxDOT in charge of department contracts with a private entity for the collection of a fee for the use of the TTC, and seeks to limit acquisition of rights-of-way solely to the purpose of furthering the transportation and utility functions of the Trans Texas Corridor. H.B. 1273 would also strip private corridor developers of the exclusive rights to develop hotels, gas stations, and restaurants along the corridor.
Opposition goes beyond farmers, ranchers and rural landowners. Some city leaders complain that the TTC will not help their traffic problems and foresee the loss of business if travelers are routed away from their municipalities. Small towns, already struggling economically, say they will die on the vine if bypassed. Environmentalists oppose the corridor because they believe the demand for it will fade in coming decades, with the prospect of higher fuel prices limiting travel. Others worry about a permanent mar on the Texas landscape. In an article appearing in the March 17, 2004 San Antonio Express, Ken Kramer of the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter said, "I think definitely the Trans Texas Corridor project as a whole, and even any one corri-dor...potentially has enormous environmental impacts."
Some Texans fear they will build it. Others fear they won't. One landowner remembers the 54-mile, $11 billion Superconducting Super Collider which was abandoned in North Texas before completion. That left a big hole in the ground, but the massive tenacle-like strips of land required for the Trans Texas Corridor system, should it fail to materialize after condemnation, would not only be a trainwreck for agriculture, but a nightmare for everyone.
Canadians, Cintra clash
Outside observers and critics warn that some federal and state agencies may be relinquishing too much authority in the rush to hand off traffic problems to others. They point out that some toll-road companies don't need the governments' permission to raise tolls or sic collection agencies on drivers with past-due accounts.
Cintra, the Spanish company tapped to build Trans Texas Corridor 35 from Dallas to San Antonio, has a reputation for aggressive collection tactics and frequently raising tolls without public input, according to charges lodged by many Canadians.
About 700 people in that country, motorists traveling 407 Express Toll Route—Cintra's 67-mile toll road north of Toronto—have complained that they have been strong armed for money and/or treated rude by Cintra's customer service representatives. In 1999, a group of private companies led by Cintra leased the road for 99 years in exchange for a payment equivalent to $2.5 billion U.S. dollars. Mike Colle, a state parliament member, has started an investigation into the complaints.
"Tolls have gone up 200 percent. People feel threatened, and they want the government to do something about it," said Colle, in a January 25, 2005 article by Gordon Dickson, a staff writer for the Fort Worth Star Telegram. "My advice is to make sure motorists in Texas are protected against extraordinary tolling, and at least have input. I hope you don't follow our lead."
Noncompete clauses in contracts that prevent governments from expanding other freeways that might take business away from toll roads are also something to watch out for, he said.
Part 1 was also posted on FreeRepublic here, by Paleoconservative:
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
BTT!!!!!!
"Thompson, a cow/calf producer and timber owner from Martinsville, told lawmakers TFB would like to see the corridor concept scrapped and future highway planning put under the auspices of the state legislature."
he's right.
the perry-tollroads are an end run around democracy.
you have to wonder who's getting swiss bank accounts from this.
This pipe dream will only exacerbate the problems with border control, not to mention selling out the small farmers and property owners for political and monetary gain by private companies.
The TTC needs to be scrapped, along with those politicians who support it!
Texas legislators have always delivered their pay-off votes between 1:00 AM and 2:00 AM by voice vote. The only solution is to vote all these cowards out next year. They can count their Zachary money at home and let the next bunch of legislators ruin Texas.
If this isn't a bunch of BS, I don't know what is. 50 million people in Texas?
I am against the TTC solely because I have seen what the developers in Texas have already accomplished.
I-35, from San Antonio to Austin is a series of car dealers, strip malls, and gas stations where it used to be productive farm and ranch lands. The small farmer/rancher has been taxed out of business. They can no longer afford to own their lands. This taxation extends to approximately 10 miles on either side of the I-35 corridor. It also extends into residential neighborhoods which have been in existence for over 30 years.
I-35 was poorly designed from the beginning. Choke points have always existed in New Braunfels, and at the I-35/Loop 410 interchange in San Antonio. That is the nature of the beast, where major highways are brought through cities to bring in commerce.
Other than the previously mentioned choke points which I am familiar with, I have never been in a traffic jam while traveling on I-35.
Thanks for the ping!
But if plans aren't made for the future then you'll be living in a parking lot on I-35. The TTC is supposed to be a limited access roadway system thus the dealerships etc you mention won't exist on it because of the lack of access and the fact that it's away from the major population centers.
Yep small farmers are a thing of the past. Much like a lot of the small business owners have had to succumb to the corporate giants. The horse and buggy days are gone and never to be again as much as we may like to see them.
The plans for future are no reason to make sacrificial cows of the property owners who happen to be in the way of the proposed plans. I see this whole issue as another "money grab" scheme where private property is taken for a pittance and doled out to favored parties for their private interests.
Please correct me if I am wrong but, emminent domain does not apply in this case.
Please correct me if I am wrong but, emminent domain does not apply in this case.
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