Posted on 04/25/2014 11:34:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, issued the following letter April 24 to the Bureau of Land Management asking the agency to respond to concerns raised by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott about the Red River Boundary Compact and associated lands.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Honorable Neil Kornze
Director
Bureau of Land Management
United States Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW, Room 5665
Washington, DC 20240
Dear Director Kornze,
In a letter dated April 22nd, 2014, the Attorney General of Texas Greg Abbott asked for responses to five specific inquiries regarding Bureau of Land Management land claims along the Red River.
These concerns were prompted by reports from BLM field hearings that the federal government may claim up to 90,000 acres of land along the Red River.
Atty. General Abbott issued a letter to BLM asking for the following concerns to be addressed, in writing. I also would like BLM to respond to these requests.
1. Please delineate with specificity each of the steps for the RMP/EIS process for property along the Red River.
2. Please describe the procedural due process the BLM will afford to Texans whose property may be claimed by the federal government.
3. Please confirm whether the BLM agrees that, from 1923 until the ratification of the Red River Boundary Compact, the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma was the gradient line of the south bank of the Red River. To the extent the BLM does not agree, please provide legal analysis supporting the BLM’s position.
4. Please confirm whether the BLM still considers Congress’ ratification of the Red River Boundary Compact as determinative of its interest in land along the Red River. To the extent the BLM does not agree, please provide legal analysis supporting the BLM’s new position.
5. Please delineate with specificity the amount of Texas territory that would be impacted by the BLM’s decision to claim this private land as the property of the federal government.
Though BLM issued a statement from April 23, 2014 in which the agency states that: “BLM is categorically not expanding Federal holdings along the Red River,” this response does not answer General Abbott’s concerns. In addition, BLM’s statement does not address whether the agency takes the position that the 90,000 acres of land in question along the Red River is already BLM land, which would make the agency’s “categorical denial” an act of deceptive sophistry.
Therefore, I would like to make an additional inquiry:
6. Please confirm that BLM does not take the position that it has rights to ownership or control of any of the 90,000 acres of land along the Red River that are at the center of this controversy or similarly situated land. If it claims any such rights, please identify with specificity the acreage, location and legal basis for claiming those rights.
If BLM indeed does not intend to claim any land which it does not already administer along the Red River, the answers to these questions should be quite straightforward.
I ask that you or your staff respond in writing to General Abbott and me, answering our questions directly and specifically, as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Ted Cruz
U.S. Senator
Hear that thunder in the background,,it’s the big guns,,and they are getting closer to BLM.
Thank you, Cruz!
Dear BLM,
My bloodlines in this state are older than your pathetic bureaucracy. P*ss off.
bttt
” management of more than 245 million acres of public land “
What’s that you say,,PUBLIC Land?
I am the public.
Just try to occupy a piece of the “public land” and see what happens. ;-)
There is a way to do that, but we need to wait for them to act first. If they don’t cease and desist, then yes they are all open season. If not, it makes no sense to do what they do.
RED RIVER BOUNDARY COMPACT
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/R/RE008.html
“... Gov. George W. Bush of Texas signed the legislation into law on May 24, 1999; Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma followed suit on June 4.
Thus, the Red River Boundary Compact became the legal document establishing the permanent political boundary between Oklahoma and Texas. The compact declares the vegetation line along the south bank of the Red River extending on a line from the 100th Meridian east to Lake Texoma as the northern border of Texas. Land between the south bank and the meridian line of the river belongs to the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache tribes and is held in trust by the federal government. The riverbed north of the meridian line belongs to the state of Oklahoma. The lone exception to the south bank being the northern border of Texas is spelled out under Article II, Section b.1, which states that in the Texoma area the boundary extends from “the intersection of the vegetation line on the south bank with the east bank of Shawnee Creek.” The line, depicted by the characters (”-..-”) in the Lake Texoma Fishing and Boating Map, Number A353, continues to the foot of the Denison Dam....”
Doesn’t sound like there’s much land in the BLM’s hands.
That raises a question or two. There are landowners along the Red River holding title for a hundred or more years.
Now the Governors of Oklahoma and Texas may indeed have some right to agree where the boundary between two states are subject to the legislature passing such a law.
That doesn’t give them the right to ignore the private property interests and declare any part of the individuals property holdings to belong to the Indians, or the Feds, does it?
Just because the river changes course, shouldn’t change the ownership of the actual land, it should just mean that the individual may own more or less in Texas or Oklahoma.
This is a fine example why Ted Cruz was elected over Dewhurst.
Love it Ted.
Any rancher man does an invite, may have to take’em up on some campfire, chilli and a sud or two.
/johnny
Love that flag! Is it available anywhere?
"On what Constitutional grounds do you continue to own any of this land?"
Easter's over...our Reps need to get back to work, and cease riding the coattails of Senator Cruz!!!!!!
An “off the charts brilliant” lawyer doesn’t ask questions to which he doesn’t already know the answers, therefore, Ted has set a trap for the BLM. I can’t wait to see what it is.
lol
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