85R12724 BPG-D

By: Frank H.C.R. No. 104

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The United States Bureau of Land Management is laying claim to a 116-mile stretch of land along the Red River in Clay, Wilbarger, and Wichita Counties, but Texas property owners have lived and worked on this land for generations, and many hold deeds and titles dating back to the 19th century; and

WHEREAS, In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase recognized the south bank of the Red River as the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma; frequent shifting of the channel gave rise to numerous disputes over the years, and following a 1922 lawsuit, the Supreme Court found that the northern half of the river bottom belonged to Oklahoma and the southern half belonged to the federal government, while Texas began on the south bank, at the river's southern gradient boundary; and

WHEREAS, The Bureau of Land Management began resurveying the land along the Texas-Oklahoma border in 2008, and Texas residents were shocked to find survey markers on their property, far from the river; inexplicably, the bureau had extended what it considered the federal riverbed roughly a mile onto dry land, absurdly placing houses, barns, fences, and livestock in the middle of an imaginary body of water; the bureau further alarmed local property owners by publishing a resource management plan for newly claimed land, along with maps and other information throwing into question ownership of between 46,000 and 90,000 acres; and

WHEREAS, The federal government has refused to clarify the precise extent of the land it purports to own, and the great uncertainty has clouded title claims, reducing land values, threatening private capital investment, and causing tremendous anxiety about the future of lives and livelihoods; landowners have asked the Bureau of Land Management to perform a gradient boundary survey, as required in the 1923 Supreme Court decision, in order to firmly identify the south bank and restore confidence in titles; the agency, however, has refused to perform such a survey; and

WHEREAS, Casting landowners into this legal limbo violates the due process guarantees of the United States Constitution, and in January 2017, the United States House of Representatives responded by passing H.R. 428, the "Red River Gradient Boundary Survey Act"; this legislation requires the secretary of the interior, acting through the bureau director, to commission a survey to identify the south bank boundary line, conducted by surveyors selected and directed jointly by Texas and Oklahoma and using the gradient boundary survey methodology established in the 1923 Supreme Court decision; and

WHEREAS, The actions of the Bureau of Land Management regarding the south bank of the Red River are in direct conflict with the fundamental rights of Americans to private property ownership free from the unconstitutional threat of seizure by the federal government, and the owners of Texas land newly claimed by the bureau deserve a fair and definitive resolution of the boundary dispute; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the 85th Legislature of the State of Texas hereby respectfully urge the United States Congress to require the Bureau of Land Management to commission a gradient boundary survey of the south bank of the Red River to be conducted in accordance with Oklahoma v. Texas, 261 U.S. 340 (1923) by surveyors selected and directed by Texas and Oklahoma, and to forbid any federal seizure of property in this area before the completion of such a survey; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to the secretary of the United States Department of the Interior, to the director of the United States Bureau of Land Management, to the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.