Georgia property owners battle railroad company in ongoing eminent domain case
ATLANTA– Questions were raised at a hearing on Tuesday about a railroad company’s use of eminent domain in one of Georgia’s poorest areas.
After three days of hearings in November, a Georgia Public Service Commission official granted Sandersville Railroad Co. permission to proceed. request to condemn nine properties in Sparta, Georgia. The commission’s decision to accept or reject the official’s recommendation could have implications for property rights across the country.
Sandersville, owned by a prominent Georgia family, wants to build a 4.5-mile rail line, the Hanson Spur, that would connect to the CSX line at Sparta, 84 miles southeast of Atlanta.
The hearing prompted Sparta property owners to drive north. Some of them could have their land evicted, and others were neighbors who didn’t want a railroad near their backyards.
Attorneys representing the property owners and the No Railroad in Our Community Coalition, the coalition formed to stop the railroad, say Sandersville does not meet the requirements of Georgia’s foreclosure law.
The law requires the company to show that the railroad serves a public purpose and needs the line for business. Although Sandersville brought five potential customers to the hearing, they did not produce signed contracts with the customers or the CSX Railroad, attorneys representing the property owners said. A Sandersville spokesman said the property owner has reached “agreements” with potential customers.
Senior attorney Bill Maurer of the Institute for Justice, who represents homeowners, said Sandersville is motivated by profit. He pointed to earlier testimony from Benjamin Tarbutton III, president of Sandersville Railroad Co., who described the expansion as an economic development project.
“It is a blatant transfer of wealth from my clients to Sandersville and its small network of clients so that those companies can get richer,” said Maurer, whose nonprofit organization fights for private property rights against expropriation for private gain.
Maurer added that Sandersville has not provided information on “basic issues” such as costs and expected loads. He also said the company never challenged a 50-page report prepared by a railroad consultant that challenged the economics of the project.
But Robert Highsmith, an attorney for Sandersville, noted that state law does not require the company to provide the analysis Maurer sought. They only have to show that the line is necessary for the company and its public services.
Currently, potential users of the Hanson Spur railroad cannot move products between areas best served by the CSX Railroad. They can only truck their goods to the CSX Railroad, which Sandersville advocates argue is not cost-effective.
“There are markets that Veal Farms can’t reach,” Highsmith said. “There are markets that Southern Chips can’t economically reach without access to the CSX mainline in East Georgia.”
Sparta residents also worry that the rail line would allow the expansion of a nearby quarry, which generates noise and dust. One resident, Kenneth Clayton, 59, said the quarry’s activities caused the ceiling of his home to collapse.
The quarry is owned by Heidelberg Materials, a publicly traded German company, and Tarbutton has indicated that the quarry is considering expanding so that the noisiest part of the operation would take place further from its current location.
Quarry or not, Blaine Smith said nothing could convince him to voluntarily give up part of his land. The Sparta property has been in his family for generations.
“I grew up on farms, we were all out in the fields, all that land where the railroad goes through,” Smith said.
Now Smith grows timber on the land and rests by the property’s pond. He and his wife, Diane, live in Maryland, but they come to Sparta several times a year.
The couple may be moving back to Sparta permanently, but they also want to protect their land for future generations of black farmers – a small part of the already dwindling farming population.
Diane Smith found Tarbutton’s demeanor “cavalier” when he spoke to them. It made her “blood boil” when he sent them notices to expropriate the property before he had full legal authority to do so, she said.
Representatives of Sandersville Railroad Co. said Tarbutton tried to reach an agreement with the Smiths and traveled to Maryland to meet with relatives. The company has made “adjustment adjustments” to the railroad in response to their requests, and it has reached agreements with owners of nine of the 18 parcels of land the company wants.
Sandersville would be legally obligated to pay fair market value for any land it acquires through the expropriation process.
But the Smiths say it’s not about the money.
“We don’t want this in our yard, or anywhere we can hear it or see it,” said Blaine Smith.
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Charlotte Kramon is a staff member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-reported issues. Follow Kramon on X: @ckramon