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Progress On Energy Arguments

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 27, 2008

Mr. Jackson:

I find your articles regarding Progress Energy's proposed and now defeated plan to route lines along Highway 54 to be a one-sided attack on the homeowners and residents living in this area.

Many of the people who you attack weekly have purchased property that we now call homes. We did so in good faith that these planned communities would be free of commercial and quasi-public intrusions. We possess the right to stand up as "private property" owners.

Our choice to stand up when the quality of life and value of homes we now live in is threatened does not qualify us as backwards-thinking ignorant Pasco County citizens. Just for the (your) record, we are not ignorant, backwoods country folk. I live in Stonegate, a new community next to Oakstead, and most of the residents including myself are college-educated, degree-holding professionals who actually care about our surroundings and value the rights afforded to property owners.

I am new to the area; however, you on the other hand appear to be a social bug intent on allowing government to plow over its citizens for the better good of the people.

I have chosen a very special place for the page bearing your article. It is at the bottom of our family's bird cage. It has found its permanent home there.

CHARLES LAWRENCE

Stonegate

Greetings, Mr. Lawrence.

Thank you for taking the time to read - and form opinions about - recent columns regarding Progress Energy's exploration of routes for new high tension lines the company expects to employ to bring electricity to new clients whose energy-intensive houses will benefit from the proposed nuclear generator plant in Levy County. I regret that you took the intent of those pieces to suggest that private property owners have no business opposing intrusions on, or reductions of, those rights.

Your concerns are duly noted.

Tell It To The Judge

That said, my attempt was to note that a reasonable, supportable and legally productive argument must extend beyond "Nobody told me this was possible, so you better take your project somewhere else; besides, it's ugly."

The list of homeowners disappointed with the outcomes of wielding such arguments in a courtroom or legislative battle extends from today to the adoption of the Constitution. (Consider, darkly, the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 decision allowing the condemnation of longtime homeowners' property for private (!) commercial development - Kelo v. New London - a sweeping new interpretation of local governments' eminent domain powers.)

Within this troubling world, I sought to point out that, while it is every property owner's right - possibly even his obligation - to proclaim his share of the castle doctrine from the highest available rock, that argument is routinely and rightly afforded minimal weight against other legal points.

Even the powerful Kennedy family, whose view of the ocean horizon off Hyannisport would be disrupted by a proposed offshore wind farm, knows better than to make scene-spoilage its only or even its primary complaint. Better to invoke shipping and navigation rights, dangers to threatened wildlife and failure of the enterprise organizers to demonstrate need. Scene-spoilage may be the foundation for their alarm, but it is not a case that impresses judges or lawmakers.

Let's Get Energized

In short: Florida's growth puts enormous demands on utilities for more energy; in this era of tight oil and gas supplies and nonsensical fear-mongering about global warming, nuclear generators are far and away the best, cleanest, safest source for new electricity; power lines have to go somewhere; and assuming a NIMBY-exclusive or even NIMBY-centric position wouldn't win the day had Progress Energy decided the proper routes bisected some Pasco homesteads.

This in no way suggests that your sentiments have no value, or are the mark of "ignorant, backwoods, country folk." I am confident your devotion to your home and community is rational, thoughtful and vitally important to you and your neighbors.

Alas, when tested against the fundamental needs of hundreds of thousands of our fellows, the sentiments of a comparable fraction are routinely trampled in legal proceedings. Moreover, though your files bulge with closing documents, advertisements, prospectuses and correspondence expressing assurances against the intrusion of commercial and/or quasi-public enterprises, the best you might win is the court's earnest sympathy.

In the absence of state statutes codifying your claims, your beef would be with those who allegedly misrepresented the real world. That, too, presents a steep legal mountain. Stonegate's developer and agents would have to be found substantially negligent in their representations and culpable for making you whole. Neither is an easy nut. First hurdle: Present evidence of your due diligence. As our pal and XM Radio advice guru would say, "Did your attorney review and sign off on your documents?"

Next, a jury would have to be persuaded to establish a compensating dollar figure (which would be adjusted by the percentage of culpability assigned the developer, real estate agent, title company and whomever else your attorney made part of the suit).

In a worst-case scenario, you would have lost your house, for which "just" compensation would have been awarded. Your case against the developer et al. would shift to pain and suffering. Best of luck with that.

Otherwise, you would be fighting over a piece (the defendants' responsibility) of a piece (minus the attorney's cut) of diminished property value, which Realtor studies indicate is based on proximity to the power line route, that is minimal and temporary.

How about this for a kicker: In some cases, property adjacent to utility rights of way actually increases in value, because the occupied land cannot be developed. In some communities - Tampa Palms leaps to mind - those open-field rights of way are designated (I am not making this up) parks.

All in all, then, for the sake of defending property rights, it is far better to be prepared to demonstrate a potentially lethal legal hand, as was indicated had been accomplished in the second column, over a mob protest about what homeowners thought they were buying (a license to be left alone) when they inked their closing documents.

I regret that degree-holding professionals such as yourself who care about their surroundings and the value of rights afforded to property owners missed the central point. I regret also my lack of clarity in the face of your obvious and understandable passion. I assure you, it will not be the last time this scenario plays out.

As for the resting place of the column in question, I trust the family fowl finds comfort in its proximity to my image. He joins a line of birds from Tampa to Washington to Sacramento and back whose aviaries have been, and shall continue to be, likewise blessed.

Now, what on earth is a "social bug?"

Cheers,

Tom Jackson

Columnist

The Pasco Tribune

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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