Yesterday, the House took up legislation called the Red River Private Property Protection Act in response to a land dispute in Texas.
The bill directs the Department of the Interior to commission a survey of land spanning 116 miles along the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma. According to the bill, the Texas General Land Office, in consultation with the Oklahoma Commissioners Land Office, would conduct the survey. The Bureau of Land Management, the surveying body of the federal government, would be required to sell off surface rights of federal land at market value after new boundaries are determined despite being shut out of the surveying process.
Here’s a longer explanation, from the Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee:
Federal interest in land along the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma dates back to the Louisiana Purchase. Fast forward more than two hundred years, several treaties and compacts later, and there is still confusion about the amount of land owned by the Federal government and the location of the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma.
In several cases during the 1920s, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma along the Red River is determined by the gradient boundary method. Using this method in the years since, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) estimates that the Federal government retains interest in approximately 30,000 acres along the 116 mile stretch of the Red River, 23,000 of which are overlaid by private deeds. On July 26, 2013, BLM issued a Notice of Intent to begin work on a revision to the Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas Resource Management Plan (RMP), which includes a comprehensive survey of the area and verification of ownership. There are many overlapping claims, missing and unreliable records, and even competing claims from both Texas and Oklahoma over the same pieces of property. Completion of the public planning process and survey will clear up all of the uncertainty.
H.R. 2130 would halt that process and nullify all previous BLM surveys, transferring authority to survey the area to the Texas General Land Office. After nearly 100 years of uncontested surveys, the sponsors of H.R. 2130 claim that BLM has misinterpreted the Supreme Court's definition of gradient and argue that the Texas border should be closer to the waterline of the river. Transferring BLM's survey authority to the Texas General Land Office would permit the State of Texas to conduct a survey that moves its border northward toward the water, effectively eliminating a large portion of the estimated federal land holdings.
This is unfair to the American taxpayers, who deserve fair compensation for their assets. If Texas wants to challenge BLM's survey methods and interpretation of the law, it should do so in the courts, not Congress.
Additionally, this jeopardizes a long standing agreement between the Federal government and the Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche tribes. These tribes receive 62.5 percent of any royalty generated for oil and gas development along this section of the Red River. If part of this land no longer belongs to the federal government, this important source of revenue relied on by the tribes could also vanish into thin air.
With the long, complicated history and various ownership claims along the Red River, BLM must be allowed to complete its planning process and land survey. The survey is neither a land grab nor an example of government overreach; it is simply a federal agency trying to resolve a very complex situation. Restricting the survey authority of the BLM, the Federal government's surveyor of record, sets a dangerous precedent. We oppose H.R. 2130 because it blindly erases an asset owned by all Americans.
RAUL M. GRIJALVA,
Ranking Member, Committee on Natural Resources.
NIKI TSONGAS,
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Federal Lands.
JARED HUFFMAN,
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans.
ALAN LOWENTHAL,
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources.
GRACE NAPOLITANO,
Member of Congress.
The White House has already issued a veto threat.
The bill passed 253 to 177. 240 Republicans and 13 Democrats voted for it. 173 Democrats and 4 Republicans voted against it.
The 4 Republicans were Justin Amash (MI-03), Bob Goodlatte (VA-06), Morgan Griffith (VA-09), and Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA-03).
Here are the 13 Democrats:
Brad Ashford (NE-02)
Corrine Brown (FL-05)
Joaquin Castro (TX-20)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Lloyd Doggett (TX-35)
Al Green (TX-09)
Gene Green (TX-29)
Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18)
Eddie B. Johnson (TX-30)
Collin Peterson (MN-07)
Marc Veasey (TX-33)
Filemon Vela (TX-34)
Pete Welch (VT-AL)