Adams: State water planning incompatible with property rights

Texas Water Code sec. 36.108 (d-2) imposes a perpetuity of preserving the aquifer. Preservation restrains alienation. So does the policy of the TWDB in its oddly named “The Street Car Named DFC” that came out in 2005 with Sen. Duncan’s HB 1763 79R that mandated “joint planning”.

“A perpetuity (preserving the aquifer) has, indeed, been pronounced to be ‘a thing odious in law and destructive to the commonwealth,’ (citing 1 Vern. 164) inasmuch as its tendency is to put a stop to commerce, and to prevent the free circulation of the riches of the kingdom; and we may accordingly ascribe to the policy of our law in favoring alienation, … for simplifying the forms of conveyance as for rendering the realty (land rights such as oil, gas, groundwater) liable to debts, (cite omitted) and making property in general more available to creditors, and therefore more directly applicable to the exigencies of the trading portion of the community.” Broom’s Legal Maxims, 6th ed., 1868, p. [443-444].

“(And) … to afford increased facilities for the transfer and circulation of property, which are so essential to the true interests of a great commercial country.” Id.

Texas creates an absolute interest in real estate in the land patent, and then people with discredited European ideas come along to commit moral wrongs (1.)  by later attempting to deprive the owner of the groundwater estate (2.) by imposing the involuntary servitude of agency preservation of the aquifer. And (3.) the state cannot deny its grant of the absolute interest (private control) in property. Id. p. [442]

What do I do?

Abe Lincoln was moved primarily by the Declaration of Independence’s promise of God-given life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Government protection of Americans in the enjoyment of our “unalienable rights with which [we] were endowed by [our] Creator” is described as “the very highest duty” and it is also the law of the land. US v. Cruikshank, 92 US 542, 553 (1876).

And the celebrated Slaughterhouse Cases established our right to self-employment.

But how our legislators’ staffers, advisors and other so-called experts in Austin were taught to abandon well-established wise and moral American policy and instead adopt as ‘sound policy’ the Tragedy of the Commons is a mystery to me.

The Tragedy of the Commons advocates environmental fascism because it quotes Hegel, the philosopher Hitler followed, to say that ‘Freedom’ comes from coercion.

Only an ordinary dictionary is needed to confirm that prioritizing TCEQ/TWDB management over private property rights is Hegelian statism (state control) that abolishes private rights (fascism).

Statism abolishes the absolute interest conveyed in perpetuity to the true landowner to exclusively manage the groundwater. Agency preservation is the ex post facto destruction of the exclusive right to manage.

Preservation goes far beyond regulation because preservation is the destruction of the right to produce the groundwater. As seen above, preservation also violates the economic Rule against Perpetuities.

“Future condition” (there is nothing desired about it) is enslavement of the landowner to old European Hegelian-derived agency goals.

It is time to stop thinking that our legislators are something akin to nobility. Titles of nobility are unlawful in the US.

Wittingly or unwittingly, we are being sold out by legislators who side with Austin agencies instead of with the voters who put them in office.

Acting ethically to protect our future is a risk of faith we must take.

God is helping us with the weather/climate and the Texas Supreme Court is doing all it can. It is our responsibility to make the strongest case possible to our respective legislators.

J. Adams

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