Was never told I couldn't discuss other BLM situations.
http://www.rfdtv.com/story/25206377/...nchers-worried
BYERS, Texas (RFD-TV) Most people think the border between Texas and Oklahoma is the Red River. Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than that, especially along the part of the river where Tommy Henderson and his family ranch.
Henderson lost a lawsuit 30 years ago that moved part of the northern Texas border over a mile to the south.
The Bureau of Land Management [BLM] took 140 acres of his property and didn’t pay him one cent.
Now, they want to use his case as precedent to seize land along a 116-mile stretch of the river.
“They’re wanting to take the boundaries that the courts placed here and extend those east and west to the forks of the river north of Vernon and east to the 98th Meridian which is about 20 miles east of us,” Henderson explained.
BLM, which oversees public land in the United States, claims this land never belonged to Texas.
The Texas landowners who have lived and cared for that land for hundreds of years beg to differ.
BLM plans on taking the land anyway. Property owners will be forced to spend money on lawsuits to keep what is theirs.
For many, that property has been in their family for generations.
"How can BLM come in and say, "Hey, this isn't yours." Even though it’s patented from the state, you've always paid taxes on it. Our family has paid taxes for over 100 years on this place. We've got a deed to it. But yet they walked in and said it wasn't ours," said Henderson.
Ever since the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, there has been controversy over where Oklahoma ends and Texas begins.
In layman’s terms the boundary is the vegetation line on the south side of the Red River.
Over time the river moves. This movement north toward Oklahoma is the sticking point.
The sandy soils erode in a process called accretion, which wipes out the bank. So the property line follows the river.
BLM claims that the river moved by another process called avulsion. With avulsion, the land may be changed by flood or currents, but the property line isn’t. So BLM claims that when the river moved back north the property line stayed put.
It doesn’t help that Oklahoma defines avulsion differently than Texas and the U.S.
“Originally, here the river was out there where it is now and it eroded and accreted up to here, and then it eroded and accreted back. Well, their interpretation is that it eroded up to here but avulsed back. So when you listen to them it is always erosion to the south because the property line follows it then, but it’s always avulsion when it goes north. So the boundary can move south but it can never move back north," said Henderson.
About 90,000 acres could be seized by BLM, disappearing across a new state line. If they are allowed to take the land, it could also affect farmers and ranchers down river like Scott Carpenter, who ranches north of Nocona.
BLM couldn’t take his land, but there would be nothing to stop his neighbor across the river from claiming some of Scott’s property belongs to him. That is just one of the reasons Carpenter wants to help.
"We have numerous places that have been in our family for over a hundred of years, and you hate to see land that people’s worked hard for would lose,” said Carpenter. “As producers we are always on a defense. We have to make decisions to try to help ourselves to help one another."
Both ranchers have been in contact with U.S. Congressman Mac Thornberry, who is working to help stop the land grab. Henderson’s land probably won’t be affected this time, but he’s hoping what happened to him won’t happen to his fellow landowners.
This report is from our partners at the Texas Farm Bureau.
the controversy is 200 years old
more:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/news/aa073100a.htmThe original Texas-Oklahoma border was based on an 1821 treaty between Spain and the United State which was upheld in 1896 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1923 (Okalahoma v. Texas), the Supreme Court attempted to settle the dispute by ruling that the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas be identified by wooden stakes set on the river bank. But, any surveyor will tell you that wooden stakes are easy to move and don't last very long at all -- especially along a river.
Earlier this July, both Texas and Oklahoma Legislatures agreed to a "Red River Boundary Compact," which sets the boundary between the States of Texas and Oklahoma as the vegetation line on the south bank of the Red River. Supporters of the Compact and leaders of both states agree that the resulting boundary is easy to identify and can be changed if and when the vegetation line erodes.
Also agreeing to the Compact were tribal leaders of the neighboring Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Tribes, the Chickasaw Nation, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
However, state border disputes like this are not over until the U.S. Congress sings. Article 1, Section 10 (Clause 3) of the U.S. Cons ution requires that when two or more states wish to enter into any agreement that agreement is subject to the consent of the Congress.
Thus, H.J.RES. 72, "Granting the consent of the Congress to the Red River Boundary Compact," passed the U.S. House last Friday (7/28/00) on a voice vote and will almost certainly be approved by the Senate.
While not a single gunshot is known to have been fired, the long-festering disagreement has seen it's touchy moments. In 1919, Texas Rangers drove an Oklahoma oil well testing crew from the disputed banks of the Red River. The crew said it was in Oklahoma, the Rangers said they were in Texas, and the governors agreed to disagree.
Speaking in support of the Resolution agreeing to the Red River Boundary Compact, Independent Rep. Bernard Sanders of Vermont told the House, "'The U.S. Supreme Court has tried twice to settle this dispute, which at one point brought the governor of Oklahoma to the border in a tank. However, true to the slogan 'One Riot, One Ranger,' the good governor of Oklahoma and his tank was held off by a lone Texas Ranger on his horse.'"
yet more:
http://newsok.com/texas-wants-to-red...rticle/3912897In 2000, Oklahoma and Texas agreed to the Red River Boundary Compact, which established the border as the vegetation line on the south bank of the Red River.
The agreement was approved by both state legislatures and ratified by Congress.
This seemed to end the squabbling that has lead to armed confrontations and two Supreme Court cases during the past 100 years.
But when it came to drawing the boundary at Lake Texoma, the Red River Boundary Commission looked to draw the line where the south bank had been before the lake was created in 1939.
However, the U.S. Geological Survey map needed for defining that bank was, and still is, nowhere to be found.
Instead, the commission used geological survey maps from the 1970s and 1980s and plotted 325 coordinates across the lake. This would become the official border.
However, in an unintended consequence, that line cut straight through a water pumping station that juts out onto the lake and provides 28 percent of the water for northern Texas cities like Wylie, Plano, Richardson, Allen, McKinney and Frisco.
It wasn't until 2009 that the border became a problem. That year, Lake Texoma began to suffer from an infestation of zebra mussels, an invasive species that attaches itself to hard surfaces like boats and docks and is small enough to be sucked through water pumps.
A federal law called the Lacey Act prohibits zebra mussels from being transported across state lines.
Hickey said in 2009 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered them to shut down the pumps on Texoma because they were violating federal law by pumping water from Oklahoma into Texas.
This has left the water district scrambling to meet the water demand by using up other resources in the state.
Texas Monthly, 1997:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/drawing-lineAll this has caused predictable confusion. “The tax collector often doesn’t know which state the land is in,” Abney says. “There are some instances in which land is not being taxed and others in which Texas and Oklahoma are both trying to tax it.” Law enforcement has encountered problems too; several years ago, rumor has it, a man committed suicide in the river bottom and authorities spent hours trying to figure out who had jurisdiction over the body. Henderson says he has had little recourse when deer hunters in the public lands behind his property have trampled his fences and killed two of his cows, even carving the hindquarters off one. Although his land is in Texas, the land behind his back fence is part of Oklahoma. “So do I call the game wardens in Oklahoma, who have to travel thirty miles and find a bridge to cross to get here?” he asks. “It’s just not feasible for them to do it.”
sameThe feds claimed that the acres did not belong to either Henderson or his neighbors across the river but were under federal jurisdiction, and a federal judge agreed. The worst part was that Henderson had borrowed money from the federal Farmers Home Administration to buy the acreage, so he still has to make payments on property he no longer owns. “It’s like if you bought a stolen car with money you borrowed from the bank—the bank still wants the money,” he says.
But even if Henderson can’t get the property back, he still wants the question of jurisdiction resolved. “We need some stability along the river,” he says. “We don’t want this to be a no-man’s-land.”
water politics, too, seems to be a theme. sources refer to a TX/NM dispute as well.
Last edited by Winehole23; 04-16-2014 at 03:21 AM.
The Obama administration took Texas's side but lost:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...river-dispute/The Supreme Court on Thursday decisively sided with Oklahoma and rejected Texas' claim that it has a right under a 30-year-old agreement to cross their common border for water to serve the fast-growing Fort Worth area. The justices unanimously said that the Red River Compact "creates no cross-border rights in Texas."
The case concerns a dispute over access to southeastern Oklahoma tributaries of the Red River that separates Oklahoma and Texas.
The Tarrant Regional Water District serving an 11-county area in north-central Texas, including Fort Worth and Arlington, wants to buy 150 billion gallons of water and said the four-state compact gives it the right to do so. Arkansas and Louisiana are the other participating states, and they sided with Oklahoma.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor's opinion for the court made plain that the justices did not find this a close case. "We hold that Tarrant's claims lack merit," Sotomayor said.
The case arose from a federal lawsuit the district filed in 2007 against the Oklahoma Water Resources Board and the Oklahoma Water Conservation Storage Commission that challenged the state's water laws and sought a court order to prevent the board from enforcing them.
Lower courts ruled for Oklahoma, including the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It found that the Red River Compact protects Oklahoma's water statutes from the legal challenge.
Legislation adopted by the Oklahoma Legislature in 2009 said no out-of-state water permit can prevent Oklahoma from meeting its obligations under compacts with other states. It also requires the Water Resources Board to consider in-state water shortages or needs when considering applications for out-of-state water sales.
The Obama administration backed the Texas district at the Supreme Court, saying Oklahoma may not categorically prohibit Texas water users from obtaining water in Oklahoma. But the administration took no position on whether the Texans ultimately should get the water they are seeking in this case.
The case is Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann, 11-889.
Though the Red River and the 100th Meridian were considered the boundaries between the U.S. and Texas, nobody really explored the boundaries to set definitive markers until the summer of 1852. In that summer, two young U.S. soldiers stationed in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Captain Randolph Marcy and Captain George B. McClellan, were sent by the government to explore the upper Red River to find its source and mark the 100th meridian. Captain McClellan, who himself would later (1861) become a general and be appointed by President Lincoln as general-in-chief of the Union Army, used astronomical observations to establish the 100th meridian. However, McClellan made a mistake in his navigation. He placed the meridian one degree east of its actual location. This made the meridian intersect the Red River at a point near the mouth of the North Fork of the Red River. McLellan and Marcy followed the North Fork of the Red River north, falsely believing the North Fork to be the Red River.
McClellan's mistake would not be discovered for five years, but by that time, Texans had already taken up residence in the area between the North Fork of the Red River and the real Red River (the light red colored land pictured in the map). On February 9, 1860, Texas called this land Greer County, named in honor of John A. Greer, the former lieutenant governor of Texas. The new county's boundaries were the area east of the 100th meridian and between the north and south forks of the Red River, Texas recognized the true 100th meridian as the eastern boundary of the Texas Panhandle but claimed the North Fork as the main branch of the Red River. Texas argued that General McClellan had claimed the North Fork was the main fork of the Red River back in 1852. Based on McClellan's error, Texas would claim sovereignty over Greer County for almost forty years.
In 1890 the United States sought to establish Oklahoma as a new Territory. A lawsuit was filed by the attorney general the United States to recognize Greer County as part of Oklahoma and not Texas. After hearing all the testimony and after examining all the do ents, the Supreme Court held that the central issue was "what did the negotiators of the Treaty of 1819 believe the boundary to be at the time they were presenting the treaty for ratification by both national governments (Spain and the U.S.)." In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that the southern branch of the Red River was the main original border of 1819. As a result, the land between the North Fork River and the Red River belonged to the United States (and Oklahoma) and not Texas. In 1896 Greer County became part of Oklahoma Territory and in 1907 the new state of Oklahoma divided the 1.5 million acres into four counties: Beckham, Harmon, Greer and Jackson counties.
However, the border dispute between Texas and Oklahoma did not end. In 1918 wildcat oil men found oil in north Texas. Wells were drilled by Texans as close to the Red River as possible, peven actually drilling into the river. Oklahoma land owners asserted that oil was being pumped from the Oklahoma side into Texas pocketbooks. Oklahomans demanded royalty payments asserting that the middle of the Red River to the south bank was Oklahoma land. The State of Oklahoma filed suit in the U.S. Supreme Court against the State of Texas. Eventually the courts decided that the entire Red River was in Oklahoma and the state of Texas only begins on the south bank. However, the bed of the Red River expands and contracts through the natural processes of erosion and accretion. The question eventually became "Where is the south bank of the Red River?" Determining the exact location of the south bank required a great deal of legal work and surveying. In 1991 the state legislatures of Oklahoma and Texas created Red River Boundary Commissions and charged them with establishing a fixed and permanent boundary. In the spring of 1999 the commissions decided "the vegetation line along the south bank of the Red River extending on a line from the 100th Meridian east to Lake Texoma as the northern border of Texas." The 1999 agreement required the Oklahoma/Texas border be marked with visible landmarks. Texas Gov. George W. Bush signed the resulting legislation into law on May 24, 1999 and Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating signed the agreement into law on June 4 of the same year. In Washington, D.C., Congress affirmed the agreement, which became federal law on August 31, 2000. 150 years of border dispute was finally resolved at the dawn of the 21st millenium.
Just give OK and KS to Putin. they all hate the US govt.
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