Eminent Domain

Meyers, Dyckman, Wolcot and Drum are setting the rest of our properties up for eminent domain in the future. Someone needs to call this out to all the residents in plain, simple language!

"To incorporate under the same provisions as have New York's investor-owned utilities, an entity need only satisfy the statutory definition and carry on the functions of a gas or electric corporation. The statute defines gas and electric corporations broadly, requiring only that the corporation is organized to generate and supply electricity for public use.

Accordingly, it appears that a private wind developer could satisfy the definition of an electric corporation and, thus, could incorporate as such. This grants the private developer the power of eminent domain."

Don't think it can happen?

November 2005 comment in the McPherson Sentinel by Rose Bacon, member of the Governor's Energy Task Force and a rancher in the Flint Hills:

"If you lease, chances are one or more of your neighbors is going to have to deal with eminent domain. Now these are private, wind development companies, however, once they sell that power to a power purchaser, they can go to the energy commission and as in Butler County, in two weeks and a little bit of paper work...they had the power of eminent domain to go across adjacent landowners' property with power lines, with trenches, with no public hearing."

"Landowners in the Flint Hills should beware that the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) granted a private Scottish owned corporation the right to use eminent domain powers to condemn property in Butler County in order to construct and operate an industrial wind power project. Elk River Wind Farm, LLC was given this eminent domain power without so much as a public hearing (Docket No. 05-ERWE-499-COC). In fact, the only ones that even received notice of Elk River’s application were other utilities. No notice was given to effected property owners.

"The entire process was quietly accomplished in less than three weeks and gives Elk River the power to dig trenches, make roads, install transmission lines and take an ownership interest in the property of unwilling landowners in order to construct their private turbine development. Documents that reveal which properties will be condemned are curiously stamped “Confidential” in the KCC file and are currently not available for public view. However, neighboring landowners have recently received notice that their property will be taken.

"For more than two years we have heard wind energy developers and proponents promise that they had no intention of using eminent domain to take our private property. Well, the Elk River project proves otherwise. Their formula for success is simple – all a developer needs is a county that allows industrial-scale turbines and one willing landowner to put everyone else’s property rights at risk. Thirty years ago, many folks opposed the federal government’s desire to take private property for a prairie park – today those same folks should be fighting against foreign corporation’s desire to take our private property for an industrial park."

Simon McGee, Kansas City, MO. 2/22/05