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On April 5, 2008, activists, citizens and political representatives will be protesting the TTC, NAU, SPP and PPP's by staging a march to the Capitol.
Please come show your support.
Download a flyer for the event here.
The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power.
--Paul Wellstone
Wellstone, a two-term U.S. Senator from Minnesota, was killed in a plane crash on October 25, 2002, eleven days before midterm elections.
His two sons now run the Wellstone Action Network.
By Matthew Stoff
From The Daily Sentinel
Following a request from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, The Texas Department of Transportation announced Monday a 30-day extension on the deadline to submit public comments about the controversial Trans Texas Corridor project.
Gabriela Garcia, TxDOT's public information officer, said by telephone that the public will have until April 18 to send the state agency comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
"We were wanting to make sure that the public had more opportunity to comment on the document, and we also had received a request from Senator Hutchison to do so," Garcia said.
Substantive comments on the document, which defines the possible routes for the proposed 10-lane highway, will be addressed in the Final Environmental Impact Statement. Release of that document may be delayed if there is a large number of additional comments, Garcia said.
So far the agency says it has received over 14,000 comments on the DEIS.
By Carlos Guerra
From the San Antonio Express-News
In the Rio Grande Valley, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sued dozens of individuals, local governments and agencies for refusing to grant it "access" to their land so it can take it for the border wall.
After refusing access to her 3-acre plot, Eloisa Tamez was sued. She countersued and a federal judge has ordered DHS to negotiate with her in good faith.
Hundreds of miles north, in one of the Hill Country's most pristine ranches, Martha, Mary and Bebe Fenstermaker are girding for their fifth legal battle since 1989 to keep their land.
The city, Bexar County and the San Antonio River Authority want it for a dam to control flooding downstream by flooding the sisters' modest home sites, and much of the rest of their ranch, a federally registered historic district dotted with 19th-century limestone structures.
Then, there are the thousands who have found all or parts of their farms and ranches under thick lines on Texas Department of Transportation maps. TxDOT wants their land for the Trans-Texas Corridor, which will take as many as 8,000 miles of land in 1,200-foot-wide swathes for privately operated utility easements, multi-lane toll roads and railroad tracks.
These are just a few of the reasons "eminent domain" is appearing more often in Texas news reports. And as we get more Texans — but not more land — expect to hear more about governments using eminent domain to fix earlier mistakes — and for less noble purposes.
Governments' seizure powers predate our nation. Based on the notion that the sovereign owns all its territory and landholders own only an interest in the land's use, Common Law empowered monarchs to take whatever they wanted.
When America's colonies gained independence, they assumed eminent domain powers by proclaiming themselves the new sovereigns. In 1791, the U.S. Constitution was amended and eminent domain was implicitly recognized — but also limited — in the Fifth Amendment, which states, "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
By 1829, however, the U.S. Supreme Court redefined "public good" by allowing states to empower private railroads to seize land. By 1954, this relaxation led the high court to let the District of Columbia take properties that were not blighted along with others nearby that were and hand them all to private parties for profitable redevelopment.
And in 2005, the court allowed New London, Conn., to seize a totally unblighted neighborhood and sell it to a private developer for a project city fathers believe will bring the city greater tax revenues.
Other eminent domain issues that are emerging involve local jurisdictions that, increasingly, are using eminent domain to provide infrastructure improvements — such as new schools, wider roads and drainage projects — that have been made necessary by uncontrolled development and low impact fees.
While the courts have, on the one hand, given governments greater latitude to use eminent domain to help private developers, they have also held that at times, "just compensation" is also due when governments' actions diminish the value of land that has not been seized by, for example, making it less desirable or less accessible.
In 2007, the Texas Legislature addressed this very issue with HB 2006, which allowed landowners to sue for "diminished access" to their property, instead of having to show "material and substantial damages" before seeking compensation. It passed but Gov. Rick Perry vetoed it.
As growing populations make land-use restrictions more necessary, we are going to face more policy questions that will revolve around eminent domain.
It is clearly time for Congress and the Legislature to rewrite laws to assure that eminent domain powers truly serve the public good — and aren't just used to fatten private wallets.
By Brett Clanton
From the Houston Chronicle
Curtis Wyatt is an experienced butcher, but no matter how he slices it, he can't find a way to cut back on his driving, even as pump prices rise.
"We just keep putting money in and putting money in," said Wyatt, who with his wife relies on their Ford Explorer for work — a need that now costs the Houston couple $400 a month in gasoline.
U.S. drivers are feeling everything from resignation to rage after gasoline prices broke records and kept going last week. Commercial truck drivers also are anxious about diesel fuel prices that are hovering at all-time highs.
Fuel costs now take almost 4 cents of every dollar of Americans' take-home pay, the highest since 1983.
At the end of last week, regular gasoline sold for a record average of $3.28 a gallon nationwide, up from $2.97 just a month earlier, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report. Diesel sold for a record $3.94, up from $3.38 a month ago, AAA said.
Prices were a little lower in Houston but still a record $3.17 for regular and $3.85 for diesel, AAA said.
The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.
The national average price for unleaded gasoline could top $3.50 per gallon and hit $4 in some parts of the country by spring as runaway crude oil costs trickle down to the pump and demand rises ahead of the busy summer driving season, analysts said. Diesel fuel prices are expected to break the $4-a-gallon mark nationwide, forcing up prices of everything trucks carry.
As prices rise, consumers likely will make small changes to adapt — shopping at cheaper stores, eating out less, cutting non-essential trips, said Stephen Brown, director of energy economics at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
But fuel prices would have to remain high for a sustained period before most people would make major changes such as moving closer to work or buying more fuel-efficient cars, he said.
Fuel prices typically rise this time of year as Americans begin ramping up their gasoline usage with the improving weather and refineries shut down for routine maintenance. But the increase this year comes as crude oil prices, which account for roughly half the cost of gasoline, continue their march past $100 per barrel.
An average 3.8 percent of U.S. household income went to fuel in the fourth quarter of 2007, and the cut likely will surpass 4 percent in the first three months of this year, said Christian Weller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit in Washington.
And consumers haven't yet felt the full brunt of oil's rapid ascent in recent weeks, said Lynn Westfall, chief economist at Tesoro Corp., a San Antonio-based oil refiner.
''If gas prices follow their normal pattern between now and June, and with crude at $100 a barrel, you'd expect to see about another 40 cents per gallon tacked onto today's gasoline price," he said.
''That's at a hundred. For every dollar that crude stays over $100, add another 2.5 cents.''
Gasoline prices broke the $3 mark for the first time in September 2005 after Hurricane Katrina took out Gulf Coast refineries and then again during the summer of 2006 before dropping back down. Last year, prices edged past the $3 barrier in the spring and once again late in the year.
The 2005 and 2006 spikes spurred Americans to make slight changes to their driving habits, said David Portalatin, director of industry analysis for the automotive division at the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based research firm.
But last year, when high prices were sustained longer, Americans drove fewer miles on a per-vehicle basis for the first time in more than two decades, he said.
The last time a similar pullback occurred was during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the U.S. economy was in recession, he said.
Some experts read the sluggishness in gasoline demand, which has fallen every week since late January, the same way. They say it has more to do with the national economy than high gasoline prices.
"We're certainly starting to see the American consumer pinched," said Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Weller said the burden of higher prices falls hardest on the working poor, who are seeing as much as 9 percent of their income go to fuel costs. In response, many consumers are being forced to cut back elsewhere as well as adding credit card debt, he said.
But things were worse in the early 1980s, when gasoline hit an inflation-adjusted record of $3.40 a gallon, said Brown, with the Federal Reserve.
Gasoline would have to be $5.50 nationwide to take the same bite out of Americans' income today, mainly because incomes have grown, he said.
But the bite's big enough now for Wyatt, the butcher, and his wife, a hospice nurse. And it's hard for them to budget their fuel costs precisely because their jobs take them to varying locations.
Other Houstonians also said they are keenly aware of high fuel prices, and are doing what they can to save.
For Tony Luciano, that meant trading his huge GMC Yukon sport utility vehicle last week for a Chrysler Crossfire, a two-seater coupe with double the gas mileage.
The 54-year-old Houstonian, who works in the shipping industry, said he would prefer to have a large vehicle, but grew tired of paying to keep the Yukon fueled up. "You have to adapt," he said.
Dan Willis, an independent truck driver from Splendora, is finding it harder to adjust to high diesel prices. Amid the recent run-up, his fuel costs have shot from about $250 to $475 per week, cutting sharply into his take-home pay.
"It's getting to be that you have to be really picky about the jobs you take," said Willis, 47, adding that if diesel hits $4.50 a gallon he will be forced to park his truck until the price falls.
The commercial trucking industry moves many of the consumer goods Americans buy, and those items could continue to jump in price as higher diesel prices are passed through to customers.
To avoid raising prices — and the risk of driving away customers — many retail chains and other businesses are scrambling to keep a lid on diesel expenses, said Rich Cilento, CEO of Fuel-Quest, a Houston firm that helps companies including Fed-Ex and Wal-Mart manage fuel costs. But it's getting harder.
The price of oil, and the fuels derived from it, no longer move up and down according to supply-and-demand fundamentals and seasonal patterns, he said.
Today, they respond to a list of "new norms," including global demand factors, geopolitical issues and perceived threats of new government regulation. In short, the rules of the game have changed.
"Now," he said, "we're sort of in uncharted waters."
Revolutionary moments attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.
--George Bernard Shaw
Public private partnerships in action: the ink wasn't even dry on Cintra's SH 130 financial contract when the following press release came out.
From USDOT
U.S. Department of Transportation Approves $430 Million Loan to Complete New Alternative to Congested I-35
WASHINGTON, DC - A $430 million loan from the U.S. Department of Transportation will give Texas the financial push it needs to help complete a new north-south highway as an alternative to the congested I-35 from Austin to San Antonio, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters announced today.
"We're helping give this project the push it needs so commuters can experience less congestion, shippers less delays and the region less headaches," Secretary Peters said.
The new southern portion of the four-lane highway is scheduled to link to the already opened northern one in 2012. When complete, the 91-mile SH 130 corridor will be entirely tolled and provide a new route to take traffic off the most congested section of I-35 in the central United States.
Cintra and Zachry American Infrastructure will finance the $1.36 billion project through the USDOT loan, bank loans and investor capital. Electronic tolling will make it possible for drivers to pay the toll without having to use cash at a tollbooth.
The loan was made possible through the Department's innovative Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan program which encourages private sector participation in the financing of highway projects with flexible repayment terms.
Secretary Peters added that the Texas project was another example of the private sector's readiness to invest in U.S. transportation infrastructure and of an evolving federal approach to financing major capacity improvements.
By Rod Sallee
From the Houston Chronicle
A Piney Woods retreat that has hosted national church conferences on controversial issues, celebrated the consecration of bishops and provided summer memories for thousands of teens now faces another kind of challenge.
The nearly two square miles of forest, hills, fields, lakes and buildings that make up Camp Allen Conference & Retreat Center, 15 miles southeast of Navasota, lie in a two-mile-wide strip listed in state documents as the preferred route for the planned Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor.
Proposed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2002, the corridor plan has drawn heated opposition at town hall meetings and public hearings throughout Southeast Texas.
Camp Allen officials have gathered more than 3,000 names on an Internet petition asking the Texas Department of Transportation not to harm the facility, beloved by many Houstonians.
Houston City Councilman Mike Sullivan was a 7th-grader in Spring Branch when his church youth group took a trip to Camp Allen.
"I had never been in the outdoors like that in my life," he said. "I can still remember taking communion there. It was my first chance to be in a place where I could think and learn about my church and kind of find myself spiritually."
Now, Sullivan said, he and his wife, Kim, and daughter, Paige, 15, drive to the camp several times a year just to spend the day or weekend.
"They have hotel rooms open to the public," he said, as well as groups visiting on various sorts of retreats. "You might see Buddhists, Muslims, Jewish groups, Catholics. They reach out to all religions."
For the past nine years, said Carol Riley of Lufkin, she has traveled with her husband, Mike, and daughters Alyson and Sarah to Camp Allen for the Christmas retreat "Holiday in the Pines."
"The serenity is indescribable and the thought of it being endangered is unimaginable," she said.
George Dehan, president of the camp, said others who have attended functions there include former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Houston Astros outfielder Lance Berkman, singer Pat Green and actress Renée Zellweger.
Although Camp Allen is owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, Dehan said fewer than half of the 42,000 visitors a year are Episcopalians. The rest, he said, come from various denominations, schools, colleges and nonprofit institutions. About 7,000 are children.
Dehan said he spoke up at a public hearing in Navasota on the corridor project, and another camp staff member spoke at one in Hempstead.
"We said we are not anti-toll road or anti-free trade," he said. "We just want to make sure this doesn't impact our camp."
Dehan said he wrote Perry and received "a polite response" that advised working through the public hearings process.
"And we've talked with some TxDOT commissioners," he said. "They always say, 'Oh, it probably is not going to impact you. We think common sense will prevail.' "
Although it does seem unlikely that roadbuilders would choose to bulldoze through a plot of land that Dehan estimates is worth $50 million to $100 million and has so many friends, he said there are reasons for concern.
Partly to ease landowners' worries that the corridor would cut their holdings apart, TxDOT has said it will try to build the corridor alongside existing roads if possible. But in the segment in question that probably would be FM 362, site of the camp's front gate and hotel.
Even if TxDOT chose to go through ranchland across the road, Dehan said, the strip designated as the "Recommended Preferred Corridor" may be too narrow to protect the camp from traffic noise.
"It would be a hugely negative effect because a lot of our programs are outdoor education," Dehan said.
TxDOT spokeswoman Gabriela Garcia noted the strip on the maps is much bigger than the actual corridor is likely to be.
Even with its full potential array of separate toll roads for trucks and cars, tracks for freight and passenger trains and land for power lines and pipelines, the corridor's maximum width would be 400 yards — about one-ninth as wide as the "recommended preferred" strip.
Garcia said it would be built in segments based on traffic demand and a segment in the Navasota area may not be needed for several years.
When the segment is deemed necessary, Garcia said, the initial construction could be nothing more than a four-lane toll road shared by cars and trucks.
TxDOT is expected to select a developer for the project later this month, and the first half of the environmental clearance process is expected to end early next year, Garcia said.
Then, if federal authorities give approval, the second part of the process — when the actual route will be chosen — would begin. That process probably will take another three to five years, Garcia said.
Although TxDOT hearings on the project are over, the public may submit comments for an Environmental Impact Statement through March 19. This may be done online at www.keeptexasmoving.com or by letter to I-69/TTC, P.O. Box 14428, Austin, TX 78761.
(Photo: D. Fazackerley)
The Texas Department of Transportation recently admitted what many of us have known all along: La Entrada al Pacifico is indeed part of the Trans-Texas Corridor.
The following article gives a taste of what's at stake for West Texas.
By Whitney Joiner
From Time Magazine
This far West Texas town is so isolated that while you can cross the Mexican border in less than an hour for lunch, the nearest shopping mall is 200 miles (about 320 km) away. Those who live around here take immense pride in the desolate landscape that served as the backdrop for the films with the most Academy Award nominations this year, Joel and Ethan Coen's murderous "No Country for Old Men" and Paul Thomas Anderson's epic, "There Will Be Blood." But instead of buzzing about their potential golden night at the Oscars, locals are more concerned these days with a very real unfolding drama that has the potential to devastate the views, the unpolluted air and the tranquil lifestyle they hold dear.
The potential villain in this story is La Entrada al Pacifico, a NAFTA trade route signed into law 11 years ago by then governor George W. Bush. It hasn't been built yet, but it may still become a reality, thanks to lobbying from the nearby city of Midland--which would become a distribution and warehousing huband the support of Midland's state representative, who happens to be speaker of the Texas House. If approved and constructed, the route would significantly increase the number of long-haul trucks bringing goods from Mexico through Marfa. In 2006, the average number of trucks crossing the U.S. border at Presidio and being driven the 60 miles (about 100 km) north to Marfa each day was 17. With La Entrada, that number would be anywhere from 300 to 800 trucks a day. To make room, a pair of two-lane roads will be widened to four-lane divided highways. Allison Scott, a 29-year Marfa resident, knows exactly what that will sound like. "Marfa is so peaceful," she says. "When I go out at 5 a.m. and look up at the stars, the silence is just so amazing ... La Entrada would definitely bring the silence to an end."
The idea behind La Entrada al Pacifico (Corridor to the Pacific) is to ease overconcentration of Asian trade in Southern California by diverting goods to a port in western Mexico and transporting them to Midland. Marfans see a plan that could fill Midland's pockets but potentially devastate Marfa's culture, lifestyle and economy, based in large part on tourism thanks to Marfa's proximity to Big Bend National Park and its reputation as an artists' haven (artists and galleries have been a fixture in town since celebrated sculptor Donald Judd relocated here from New York in the '70s).
Days after a March 2007 public meeting on the project, attended by nearly 400 West Texas residents--none of whom supported it--the fight against La Entrada began. Local businesses sold STOP LA ENTRADA T shirts; residents joined letter-writing campaigns and launched anti-Entrada blogs. Some Marfans have devised creative ways to fight the corridor. Gary Oliver, 60, a political cartoonist for the local newspaper, has composed a protest song on his accordion. "Move to Marfa for the peaceful life,/ So far away from the stress and strife," he sings. "Then you put your ear down on the highway floor,/ Hear the many trucks in the distance roar ... La Entrada, here come a lot of highway blues."
And Vicente Celis, 42, who moved here from Mexico in 2003, shows off the digital slide show he's developing, An Inconvenient Truth--style, to explain La Entrada to other residents. He makes reference to the documentary's swimming-frog example of global warming--the frog that doesn't realize it's boiling because the water temperature increases so slowly. "The same thing is going to happen to us," says Celis. "But [we] don't have to let people boil us."
Residents do have hope. The arrival of massive numbers of 18-wheelers depends on Mexico's infrastructure. So far, work on the trans-Mexican highway hasn't broken ground, and the port in western Mexico needs repair. The results of a government-funded study about how well the plan would work for West Texas will be released soon. But for the locals who see this land as a refuge--and, on occasion, a Hollywood backdrop--the decision to build or not to build isn't even a question.
By Peter Canellos
From the Boston Globe
REFUGIO, Texas - With an abandoned Wild West-vintage town of storefronts slumbering just a block from old US 77, tiny Refugio is a place where myth and reality coexist in a ghostly silence.
And now this South Texas outpost is swept up in one of the more intriguing tests of myth vs. reality in today's political life: the battle over the so-called NAFTA Superhighway.
Local residents came together last week for one in a series of public hearings on the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive public works project that in this area would take the form of a superhighway from the Mexican border to the Arkansas border, with special trucking lanes and rail lines, along with communication and utility cables.
Texas officials say the superhighway is necessary to relieve chronic road congestion. Local opponents say it will cut through their ranches and destroy the area's ecology. And politicians like US Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, and national commentators like CNN's Lou Dobbs have condemned it as a betrayal of American interests - the very road by which American jobs will move out of the country.
"This is a major conduit for getting cheap imported goods into the heartland," insisted Hagan Parmley, a local property owner who is also part of Corridor Watch, an opposition group of residents who gathered in the Refugio community center late last month.
Parmley said Texas business interests support the highway because it would allow Asian-manufactured products to be shipped to deep-water ports in Mexico and then quickly brought into the United States. With reduced transportation costs, it would be even easier for businesses to move American manufacturing jobs to Asia or Mexico.
Parmley's newsletter, which he distributed to the 80 or so residents at the Refugio hearing, expressed excitement that Dobbs, whose television show is devoted to attacking global trade deals and illegal immigration, has taken up the cause of defeating the Trans-Texas Corridor.
But given all the portentious state-of-the-world rhetoric that has surrounded the project, the big surprise at the Refugio hearing was how comfortingly normal the objections seemed.
"I think it's overkill," said Wilson Toudouze, a San Antonio rancher whose mother lives in Refugio. "I think there's probably better alternatives than taking this enormous amount of private property and giving it to the state."
"This wasn't what we were sold in the original I-69 - all those pipelines and train lines," added Melvin Santiago, who came down from the Houston area to express his opposition. "People are a little worried."
Indeed, the state of Texas has had trouble settling on a precise route. In the northeastern part of the state, officials had to bypass Houston's sprawl. Down by the Rio Grande they had to avoid several giant ranches that have been preserved as heritage areas.
The people who gathered in Refugio were, by their own description, the inheritors of the Texas of John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" - large men and women of late middle age, almost all wearing boots, some with cowboy hats, and many with waistlines proudly bulging out of their tight jeans.
One stood up and proclaimed that his family has been on the land longer than there's been a Texas, and that he figures he can take better care of it than the government can.
Preserving property rights was a far bigger concern than the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, which some concede has benefited Texas. Others mentioned the trade deal not as an evil in its own right but as evidence of the selfish motives of the business interests backing the highway.
One group was not heard from. Refugio County is almost half Hispanic, and recent immigrants make up the bulk of the workers in town. For them, the highway represents a different kind of threat - bypassing US 77, whose truckers give the town its only economic lift by stopping for food and fuel.
But the translator brought in to assist Spanish-speaking residents wasn't needed. Only the property owners had their say.
"Right now we get $70,000 per month in sales tax revenue that is generated by traffic through the town," explained Karen Watts, a selectwoman. "If we're bypassed, that number will drop tremendously. We're a community of people who are aging and we're a poor community. We have some large ranches but they don't help most people."
NAFTA may get the goat of national commentators, but to the people of Refugio, the superhighway battle is more about land and money - just like in the old days.
