Copyright © 2011 by Sam Pakan. All Rights Reserved.

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“Without discussion, the Public Utilities Commission chose an alternate route automatically subjecting those properties not represented to eminent domain. The landowners on the route selected had received a notice that their lands could, at some point, be affected, but all assumed that only the preferred route would be considered at the hearing. None realized they would not have an opportunity to intervene specifically for their properties should the preferred route be rejected.

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The eastern Texas Panhandle, a land of rolling sand hills, tree-lined creek beds and tall grass vistas, may seem a desolate place to outsiders. Still, it has its beauty, especially to the cattle ranchers and wheat farmers who work and live on it. But not for long. 

Much of this land, the fragile habitat of the Lesser Prairie Chicken and the Whooping Crane, is scheduled to become industrialized if the Texas PUC, the DOE and FERC have their way. Incongruously, the demolition of this mostly native grassland is being proposed in the name of green energy. More