(InvestigateTV) — Driving across their nearly 600 acres in Hancock County, Georgia, never gets old for Blaine and Diane Smith.
Their history is just as rich as the timber crops they’ve been farming; Blaine Smith’s enslaved ancestors lived and worked on the Sparta, Georgia, land.
Now, Blaine and Diane Smith own the property; they are among the less than 2 percent of Black farmers across the country.
“My father farmed this land; my grandfather farmed it during most of his life,” Blaine Smith said. “He bought it back in the 1920s. During that time, he raised cotton, corn, peas, and all kinds of vegetables.
“It’s still in the Smith family. Not one piece of it had gotten away,” until this past September, when state leaders allowed a private company to seize part of their land under eminent domain.
According to a unanimous vote by the five-member Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), Sandersville Railroad Company was legally allowed to condemn nine properties in Sparta, including parts of the Smiths’ land.
“It’s my property,” Blaine Smith said. “You don’t have the right to take.”
Eminent domain, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is defined as the right of a government or its agent to appropriate private property for public use, with payment of compensation. In Georgia, the process starts by condemning the site.
The Sandersville Railroad Company wanted the condemned sites to be part of its Hanson Spur Project, which its website describes as “a 4.5-mile spur connecting raw material producers to the CSX Transportation (CSXT) rail line that runs along Ga. Highway 16 in Hancock County.
“The Hanson Spur will serve as a vital link to the North American transportation network for Hancock County and will help take Middle Georgia’s natural resources and agricultural products to new markets,” it said.
The railroad said the route would be used to haul rocks that are used to build concrete and that the train project will improve infrastructure. But the Smiths feel railroaded.
“If you listen to the railroad folks, they say ‘you’re keeping your land, we’re just taking a little piece of it,’ ” Blaine Smith said. “But they’re devaluing it; they’re defacing it; they’re creating hazards through it.”
The family is just one of at least a dozen local eminent domain cases in recent years tracked by our investigators.
Current statistics are few and fragmented, but there is some nationwide data available. A 2007 Institute for Justice study revealed that when eminent domain was used for private development, it most often impacted areas where more than half of the community was made up of people of color. As well as in areas where nearly half of the community’s population sat below the poverty line.
In the city of Sparta, where the railroad is being built, census records show that 51% of residents live in poverty. The median income is $22,000.
“We’re a county that needs new opportunities, new job growth [and a] new tax base,” said Ben Tarbutton, president of the Sandersville Railroad Company, who added the Hanson Spur Project “will have an annual impact of $1.5 million.” He also touts its economic development impact “because that’s what matters to folks.”
“We’re trying to make a difference for citizens that are here.”
Tarbutton said the train would only travel one round trip per day, five days a week during daylight hours, and that it wouldn’t be a nuisance to the landowners. He also said he understands families’ concerns about their legacy, but “the condemnation process is the last resort. We have had multiple conversations with the landowners,” adding he wants to keep negotiations open with those who have concerns.
While several other property owners made deals with the company, three families are holding out, including the Smiths, over fears if they give up land now, the company could take even more in the future.
Tarbutton denied the company will pursue eminent domain in the future. “No,” he said. “We’re very clear.”
But the Smiths don’t believe that claim, which is one reason why the Institute for Justice, an Arlington, Virginia-based public interest law firm, now represents the families against the railroad.
“The railroad’s position is just that ‘I’m the railroad and obviously I’m going to benefit you,’ and that’s just not enough,” said attorney Betsy Sanz.
The group is appealing the eminent domain decision in Fulton County Superior Court, where the PSC is headquartered. The institute is arguing the PSC wrongfully granted the Sandersville Railroad Company approval after the company failed to prove the project is feasible and that it’s of actual public use.
“What the railroad has shown is that this track — if it even comes about — is going to promote the profits and the cost reductions for a couple of private companies and that’s all,” Sanz said.
“The Institute for Justice is using this as a money-making venture for themselves,” Tarbutton said.
The Institute for Justice believes the case could go all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which hasn’t taken up the issue of eminent domain since its controversial 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London. In 2005, the court ruled in favor of New London, Connecticut, affirming the city’s right to seize private land for economic development.
The Kelo decision resulted in many states – including Georgia – creating new local protections where economic development cannot be the reason to seize private property.
“I go back to what my father said,” Blaine Smith said. “‘Keep the land.’ The land gives you respectability. Everybody around here knows this is the Smith land.”
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