Posted on 07/22/2006 8:46:57 AM PDT by WestTexasWend
HILLSBORO, Texas — Leroy Walters has survived many a threat on the farm that has been in his family for 120 years — droughts, hailstorms, tornadoes, grasshopper attacks.
But now he sees a manmade danger on the horizon: a colossal, 600-mile superhighway that will plow clear across Texas, perhaps cutting through Walters' milo and corn fields, obliterating family houses and robbing his grandchildren of their land.
"I don't think they're going to want to pay a toll to go across this land," he said. "They want to enjoy it free, as Texans should enjoy it."
That kind of fear and anger among farmers and landowners across the Texas countryside could become a political problem for Republican Gov. Rick Perry as he runs for re-election in November.
It was Perry who proposed the Trans Texas Corridor in 2002, envisioning a combined toll road and rail system that would whisk traffic from the Oklahoma line to Mexico.
The initial Oklahoma-to-Mexico stretch would be just the first link in a 4,000-mile, $184 billion transportation network. The corridors would be up to a quarter-mile across, consisting of as many as six lanes for cars and four for trucks, plus railroad tracks, oil and gas pipelines, water and other utility lines, even broadband transmission cables.
The exact route for the corridor has not yet been drawn up, though it will probably be somewhere within a 10-mile-wide swath running parallel to Interstate 35. Whatever course it takes, many farmers and landowners will lose property to the state. Construction could begin by 2010 after federal approval and selection of the precise route.
The opposition comes in several forms: Some see it as an assault on private property rights; some object to putting the project in foreign hands (the state accepted a proposal by a U.S.-Spanish consortium to build and operate it, although the final construction contract hasn't been signed); and some see the project as an affront to open government because part of a development contract with consortium Cintra-Zachry is secret.
Of Perry's major opponents — Democrat Chris Bell and independents Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman — Strayhorn has stirred the most fury.
At campaign stops she calls the plan the "Trans Texas Catastrophe," a "$184 billion boondoggle" and a "land grab" of historic proportions. She refers to Perry's appointees on the transportation commission as "highway henchmen." She lets loose with Texas-twanged jabs at the contract with the "foreign" Cintra-Zachry.
"Texans want the Texas Department of Transportation, not the European Department of Transportation," she says, often to loud applause, whoops and hollers.
Cintra-Zachry proposes paying $7.2 billion to build the first segments. For that, it would get to operate the road and collect tolls for years to come. It is part of a growing privatization trend in the United States.
A week ago, Strayhorn picked up a $6,500 campaign donation and endorsement in Temple from the Blackland Coalition, a group of anti-corridor farmers who work the rich black soil of Central Texas.
Coalition chairman Chris Hammel said Texas needs a governor who will halt the project, start over and do it right. "One man started it with a pen. One person with a different pen could stop it," he said.
Perry's spokesman, Robert Black, dismissed suggestions the toll road will hurt the governor's re-election campaign.
"The governor recognizes the concerns that rural Texans have. Remember, he's from rural Texas," Black said. "But he also believes that you have people out there who are spreading bad information."
Supporters say the corridors are needed to handle the expected NAFTA-driven boom in the flow of goods to and from Mexico and to handle Texas' growing population.
The state will own the land beneath the corridor and will oversee the toll amounts set by Cintra-Zachry, Black said.
Despite a state attorney general's ruling that the Cintra-Zachry contract be made public, the Perry administration has gone to court to prevent the disclosure of what it says is proprietary information. The rest of the contract is available on the Internet.
"We don't know for sure whether this is a concept that we can endorse or not because we have not seen it," complained Mayor Will Lowrance of Hillsboro, a town of 8,200 people 55 miles south of Dallas. "I happen to still believe in the open records law in Texas."
Hill County Judge Kenneth Davis, who like Lowrance is a conservative Democrat supporting Strayhorn, agreed with Lowrance and added: "If we're going to build a highway in Texas, let's build it with Texas money, not a foreign company's money."
Both local leaders dislike the rural location under consideration for the corridor route because it bypasses Hillsboro, where outlet shops and restaurants along I-35 fuel the economy.
They and state Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, promoted a regional plan for the corridor to run three miles east of Hillsboro, instead of the current 15 miles.
Still, some Texans stand to lose land.
"That's unfortunate," said state transportation department spokeswoman Gaby Garcia. "There always will be compensation for any land."
Citizen anger percolated through a recent public hearing in Hillsboro, where a number of speakers saw Perry as the root of the problem.
Joey Dauben, who described himself as a young Republican from Red Oak, poked fun at Perry's famous coif. "Gov. Good-hair is definitely not getting my vote," he said.
Janet Walters said she believes Perry eventually will realize the corridor proposal is a critical campaign issue.
"I don't think Rick Perry will back off until he feels like, 'This is going to cost me the election,' " she said. "Then he'll back off."
This is written as if the TTC was Rick Perry's idea. It's not, Perry isn't that smart.
Ever been on I05 or US1?
"TTC could also be a prime target/transit line for terrorists."
So now a condition of building something has to pass the non-prime terrorist target litmus test?
I agree with your synopsis. I'm not happy with Perry playing RINO....and he's gotten too big for his britches....
The cynic in me wonders how many of these threatened farmers have received federal agricultural money? And how much?
Perry is very pretty and has good hair. He is also a re-cycled Democrat as many Texas GOP office-holders are. He foisted thousands of LA gang members on Houston and has no exit strategy for getting these criminals out of Texas. Now he will have every rural landowner who fears the greedy eminent domain arm of the state angry with him. Kinky and Grandma may get more votes than we think.
Good point. I never thought of that. A derailment would be a mess! I also question the wisdom of building this thing with gas prices on the way up? How much longer can we keep using trucks as our primary source of moving goods?
This proposed highway has its border gate in the middle of the nation? So uninspected cargo can get halfway into the country? It connects Mexico with Canada? What's in it for the United States?
I reminds me of the Interstates they ran through our cities but not to them, walling them in half or walling them off. They hastened the urban decay process a lot.
This issue might not cost Perry the election but, it will sure make it closer.
With all the controversy that arises around large highway projects, how did the Interstate system ever get built in the first place?
"I don't think they're going to want to pay a toll to go across this land," [Leroy Walters] said. "They want to enjoy it free, as Texans should enjoy it." [emphasis added]Silly me. I work like a dog for my money, and in Texas it grows on trees.[]
Hill County Judge Kenneth Davis, who like Lowrance is a conservative Democrat supporting Strayhorn, agreed with Lowrance and added: "If we're going to build a highway in Texas, let's build it with Texas money, not a foreign company's money." [emphasis added]
How do you think uninspected cargo gets into the country now?
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"Will have"? Already has!
I have not met a single rural Texas landowner (of which I am one) who is not enraged by that RINO's abortion.
The only advocates for the TTC I have seen here on FR are city folk -- or TXDOT shills -- or the terminally ignorant. The TTC is an unmitigated disaster for rural Texans and rural Texas economies.
Very good point. The complaints of the farmers and towns are no different in type from those for any highway system, although perhaps larger in scale. If they had been applied in the past, we wouldn't have any major highways, much less the interstate.
Whether this particular project is a good idea or not is a question I don't really know anything about.
But the stated criticisms of it aren't very valid.
This is an official government website:
http://www.spp.gov/report_to_leaders/index.asp?dName=report_to_leaders
It's a long read but it's well worth reading if you want to know what the PLAN is. Pretty scary.
How exactly would you go about running an Interstate "to" a city? The whole point of such a system is to limit access, which by definition isolates it from the neighborhood.
In 1950 minimum wage was 50 cents an hour and gasoline was 30 cents gallon. Today the minimum wage is $5.15 and gas is $3.05. Ten times 50 cents an hour is $5.00 and ten times 30 cents a gallon is $3.00 dollars.
The transition from rail to trucks took place in the 1950s... If we could afford it then... we can afford it now.
Both trucks and cars get more miles to gallon now than they did in the fifties. It will not be a problem.
Not many, and not much.
Most of the federal ag money now goes to big agribusiness, not the family farm.
I know first-hand. Multi-generational farm, not getting a dime and willing to keep it that way.
And, yes, I'm in the path of Perry's road.
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