A federal judge has rejected a challenge to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plans to erect a transmission line through farmland in south Meigs County to help supply power for a new $300 million load control center.
U.S. District Court Judge Harry “Sandy” Mattice Friday rejected an appeal to TVA’s eminent domain action against four landowners for the proposed power line.
Greg Vital, president and CEO of Morning Pointe Senior Living and owner of hundreds of acres of land near Georgetown, Tennessee, asked the court in November to block TVA’s request to enter his property to scope out plans for the transmission line. Vital claimed TVA was exercising its power to take property “carelessly and without restraint” and called TVA’s plans “vague” with “no defining scope.”
But Mattice ruled that TVA was within its legal right in its order of possession issued to Vital to enter his property in preparation for seeking a right-of-way for the power line route.
“Mr. Vital’s consternation with what is transpiring in this action is understandable and very familiar to this court,” Mattice said in a 7-page opinion issued today. “The whole idea of federal eminent domain may seem somehow to run counter to an incredibly powerful American value, one enshrined in the United States Constitution – the sanctity of private property. Nevertheless, as American law has evolved since the founding, federal eminent domain has become a settled, if not routine (and certainly not popular), feature of American life.”