ATLANTA – A lawyer representing several Hancock County property owners asked the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) Tuesday to overturn a hearing officer’s recommendation to let Sandersville Railroad Co. condemn 43 acres through eminent domain.
The freight rail line is seeking to use the state’s eminent domain power to acquire the land for the Hanson Spur, which would be used to ship locally mined granite, farm products and timber along a CSX line to markets.
Some of the properties have been in the affected families for generations. One owner inherited their land from an ancestor born into slavery, while another family has owned their property since the Civil War.
The hearing officer ruled in April that the project would serve a legitimate public purpose and, thus, eminent domain would be justified.
But the company has failed to demonstrate the project either would benefit the public or that other alternatives wouldn’t accomplish its purpose, Bill Maurer, a senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm based in Arlington, Va., told the PSC.
“This commission got remarkably little information, remarkably few documents for a project this size,” Maurer said. “We believe it is impossible for the commission to find this is a legitimate purpose because we simply do not know enough about this project.”
But Robert Highsmith, the lawyer representing the company, said the state law governing eminent domain doesn’t require such details as a feasibility study, a noise impact analysis or an economic analysis of the project’s value.
Highsmith also argued that eminent domain exists in state and federal law for good reason.
“Every condemnation is a failure of a private negotiation for sale but a recognition that a public use and a public need is enough to justify the exercise of eminent domain,” Highsmith said. “Without it, we wouldn’t have airports, we wouldn’t have roads, we wouldn’t have railroads.”
Maurer and Highsmith also clashed over whether the Hanson Spur project would benefit the public.
“This project is not about meeting a public need, nor is it about providing a necessary service to the public,” Maurer said. “It arises for one reason and one reason only: the private want of private companies for more money.”
Maurer went on to the argue that reforms to Georgia’s eminent domain law the General Assembly passed in 2006 explicitly state that economic development does not constitute a public purpose for a project.
But Highsmith said that same 2006 law also states that business conducted by railroads qualifies as a public purpose.
“(The spur) opens a channel of trade, and that channel of trade is going to be used by multiple customers,” he said.
Highsmith said five business owners who plan to use the spur provided testimony to the hearing officer.
A lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center also addressed the commission, arguing the spur would have an impact beyond the specific property owners affected by the project. Jamie Rush spoke on behalf of the No Railroad in Our Community Coalition.
“Members have an interest in seeing this historically and predominantly Black neighborhood maintain its nature and character, including preventing increased industry and environmental burden on its residents,” she said.
Maurer asked the commission to at least stay any eminent domain order the PSC approves until after the case has been litigated in court.
Highsmith countered that a stay isn’t necessary because the project could not be built until negotiations establishing just compensation for the properties are completed.