Red River land dispute echoes Cliven Bundy fight in Nevada

Lt.Gov Dewhurst, Land Commissioner Patterson and Henderson

A federal agency’s planning effort for land along the Red River has ignited a new skirmish in the fight between conservative Texas politicians and Washington. The uproar follows a high-profile controversy around the Bureau of Land Management’s actions in Nevada. The tangle between the bureau and Texas has led to political saber-rattling, including threats of legal action from Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican nominee for governor. The fight is over a 116-mile stretch of land along the river’s southern edge, which forms a portion of Texas’ border with Oklahoma. The agency, which manages 250 million acres of public land, says the land has belonged to the federal government since the Louisiana Purchase. The agency has never actively managed the land but is considering ways to do so as it updates its land management plans for the region. The plan, which will be finished sometime in 2018, could call for closing off sections of the land along the Red River, limiting certain activities like grazing to designated areas, or leaving it the way it is. Critics including Abbott, Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Ted Cruz say the actions are an attempt to take land from Texas. “The BLM is now claiming that the federal government has always owned the land in question,” Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said in a written statement. “That is certainly news to the Texans who have possessed, cultivated and reportedly paid taxes on that very land for years.” The controversy hinges on the area’s murky boundaries. The state line between Oklahoma and Texas is pegged to the middle of the Red River through the 1920s Supreme Court decision. Go north of an imaginary line dividing the river down the middle, called the medial line, and you’re in Oklahoma. Head to the small cliffs to the south that the river has carved out, called cut banks, and you’re in Texas. Anywhere in between is federal land. The problem is, rivers change course. Under the court’s decision, changes that take place over time, called accretion, also shift the state line between Texas and Oklahoma. More sudden changes, called avulsion, don’t. That’s created uncertainty as to who owns what. Court decisions have upheld the federal claim on the land. Texan Tommy Henderson, who was involved in a 1986 case over land rights between ranchers from both states, had paid $300,000 for 140 acres, but a court ruled it actually belonged to the government...more