Legislation to protect private property along the Red River was approved by the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee on Thursday.
The action moved the bill one step closer to full consideration by the House of Representatives. The Red River Private Property Protection Act, which was introduced by Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), would settle all outstanding federal ownership claims by providing legal certainty for landowners along the Red River.
“I’m very pleased that the Natural Resources Committee agreed to consider my bill and passed it out of the Committee today,” Thornberry said. “This is an important step toward our ultimate goal of getting this bill signed into law. I will continue working with my colleagues in the House and Sen. (John) Cornyn (R-Texas), who has introduced similar legislation in the Senate, to resolve this issue once and for all.”
Recent actions by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has many landowners and other public officials concerned about disputed claims of ownership. Since the issue first surfaced in December 2013, Thornberry’s office has called several meetings for landowners along the river, as well as contacted them via phone and other forms of correspondence to coordinate action. The provisions within Thornberry’s bill reflect much of the input they received during that correspondence, as well as guidance received from the Texas General Land Office, and many others.
To provide a form of legal certainty to property owners along the Red River by, the legislation would commission a survey of the entire 116-mile stretch of contested area along the Red River using the gradient boundary survey method developed and backed by the Supreme Court to find the proper boundary between private and federally owned land; order that the survey be conducted within 2 years by Licensed State Land Surveyors and approved by the Texas General Land Office in consultation with The Commissioners of the Land Office in Oklahoma; allow landowners who hold the proper right, title and/or interest in the contested area to appeal the determination of the survey to an administrative law judge, with landowners also able to file for a modified Color-of-Title Act land patent request for public land that has been held in good faith and in peaceful adverse possession for $1.25 per acre; prevent any contested land from being included in the Resource Management Plan outside of the provisions in the bill; and require the BLM to sell the remaining federal lands along the Red River at no less than market value and setting forth procedures for offering adjacent landowners the first rights of refusal.
The bill also explicitly states that nothing in the act shall be construed to modify the Red River Boundary Compact and that the interest of Texas and Oklahoma and the sovereignty rights of the federally recognized Native American tribes north of the South Bank boundary line will not be affected.