Please report an abuse of eminent domain here at the Castle Coalition website.
The Castle Coalition is an eminent domain abuse watchdog group, a project of the Institute for Justice.
Please inform the Coalition that widespread expropriation (the Louisiana civil law term for eminent domain) is underway in the LSU/VA project, and it's especially inappropriate on the LSU Footprint site because adequate financing to build the project is not in place.
It's also generally inappropriate because LSU refused to consider the Charity Hospital alternative - which would not have required nearly as much expropriation of residences and businesses, if any.
Several business owners and residents in both footprints have indicated they want to fight expropriation, and two cases are ostensibly making their way through the courts here in New Orleans.
Please help them by getting the Castle Coalition involved.
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The challenge is that more eminent domain is on its way through many back doors. In addition to economic development takings using the "blight" approach as seen in Kelo, we are in the midst of natural resource development takings in pursuit of shale gas (as in Barnett shale, Marcellus shale, and more).
The pursuit of these gas-rich shales brings with it more pipelines and more underground gas storage fields -- and that (pipelines & storage fields) always means eminent domain.
And in Pennsylvania, the gas industry and some legislators are talking up "forced pooling" which will permit gas companies to seize gas under your property, even if you refuse to sign a lease.
Unfortunately, the otherwise excellent Institute for Justice of Kelo fame declines to intervene in energy/utility takings because, they told me, of the "public good" premise. Instead, the Institute should reconsider and offer support in this expanding "market" for eminent domain abuse.
But property owners can fight back. Our two-year battle against Houston-based Spectra Energy which seized our property rights for an underground gas storage field led to the development of a website. If you want to learn from our experience and understand this type of eminent domain, refer to this post: Spectra Energy
Or here: http://www.spectraenergywatch.com/blog/?p=616
Private property rights are so fundamental that founding fathers such as Samuel Adams described it as an "essential" right and wrote, "that no man can justly take the property of another without his consent."
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