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.