Dish, Texas: A Fight for Land Owner's Right's

This will be the first of many articles to come about how Pipeline Companies are destroying the lives of so many citizens in the United States. As the process unfolds in Dish, Texas and the battle gets harder, my articles will get heavier and more heated. This is a matter that is serious and is affecting the well being and homesteads of so many people in America.

Dish, Texas, formerly known as Clark, Texas, is a quiet area located in Denton, County, Texas, just north of the Texas Motor Speedway. It is a fairly quite area with agricultural farmland that is primed for crops and raising livestock and has the characteristics of growth like that of Prosper or Frisco. There is, however, an issue that seems to be getting the attention of the residents and surrounding communities. These Pipeline Companies seem to have a hunger for the land in Dish that drives them to wrongfully take land from private land owners.

According to the United States Constitution no person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am5. According to the Texas Land Owner's Bill of Right's, your property can only be taken for public use, your property can only be taken by a governmental entity or private entity authorized by law to do so and the entity that is proposing to take your property must provide you with an assessment of adequate compensation for your property. http://townofdish.com/objects/TEXAS_LANDOWNER_S_BILL_OF_RIGHTS.pdf.

In the case of Dish, Texas, many of the citizens of this town have become enslaved by the Pipeline Companies slapping easement after easement on their property, claiming it is for the benefit of the public. How does the town of Dish, Texas or the citizens benefit from the crippling effect of pipeline easements? The answer is simple, they don't. These companies are simply getting what they want a little bit at a time and in the end it does nothing, but leave the citizens with land that they cant do anything with. In the State of Texas there are no laws that give town's such as Dish, Texas, anyway to regulate the route for an easement and the pipeline that is contained within it. This gives the Pipeline companies full reign over where they want their pipeline and easement to run. This is like giving a spoiled brat full control of a candy store with all the lids off the jars. Without anyone telling them what to do, they will do whatever they want.

According to the Oregon People's Utility District Asscociation, Local control and the lack of a profit motive are the defining characteristics that separate public power from the private utility industry. Because members of the public can buy shares of private utilities, IOUs are sometimes referred to as being 'publicly held" or as "public utilities," but the term "public" is more appropriately applied to consumer-owned utilities. Consumer-owned utilities can be People's Utility Districts, Municipal Utilities, or Electric Co-operatives. http://www.opuda.org/publicprivate.html

Like so many other disaster's that have involved Privatized Companies that are publicly traded, over looked and non-regulated, this is just another piece of the puzzle that needs to be put together and heavily looked at. There are to many publicly traded companies that have destroyed the lives of so many people. We as citizens do not need to back down from this fight. There are strength in numbers and if enough local governments band together, legislation can and will be passed giving the power back to us and rightfully so.