In ‘bare wealth transfer’, Georgia railway company plans to build on low-income community
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A hearing Tuesday raised questions about the railroad’s use of a prominent site in one of Georgia’s poorest areas.
After three days of hearings in November, the Georgia Public Service Commission granted the Sandersville Railroad Co.’s request. to legally dispose of nine properties in Sparta, Georgia. The commission’s decision to accept or reject the officer’s recommendations could affect property law across the country.
Sandersville, owned by a prominent Georgia family, wants to build a 7.25-kilometer-long line called the Hanson Spur that will connect to the CSX railroad in Sparta, 85 kilometers (135 miles) southeast of Atlanta.
The hearing led Sparta property owners to make the trip north. Some of them may have had their land abandoned, while others were neighbors who didn’t want a railroad near their yards.
Attorneys representing property owners and the No Railroad in Our Community Coalition, formed to stop the railroad’s construction, said Sandersville did not meet the requirements of Georgia’s eminent domain law.
The law requires the company to demonstrate that the railway will be used by the public and needs a business line. Although Sandersville has brought five potential customers to the lawsuit, they have never shown signed contracts with the customers or the CSX railroad, attorneys representing the property owners said. A Sandersville spokesman said the owner has reached “agreements” with potential customers.
Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Bill Maurer, who represents the property owners, said Sandersville is motivated by profit. He cited earlier testimony from Benjamin Tarbutton III, president of the Sandersville Railroad Co., describing the expansion as an economic development project.
“It’s a blatant transfer of wealth from my clients to Sandersville and its small network of clients, so those companies can get rich,” said Maurer, a nonprofit that advocates for private land rights against eminent domain for private use.
Maurer added that Sandersville has yet to produce information on “fundamental issues” such as expected costs and burdens. He also said that the company has never objected to a 50-page report produced by a railway consultant that opposes the economic viability of the project.
But Robert Highsmith, a Sandersville attorney, noted that state law does not require the company to provide the analysis Maurer is seeking. They only have to show that the line is necessary for business and public services.
Currently, potential users of the Hanson Spur rail line cannot transfer products between locations that are better served by the CSX rail line. They can only truck their goods to the CSX rail line, which Sandersville advocates say is uneconomical.
“There are markets that Veal Farms can’t access,” Highsmith said. “There are markets that Southern Chips cannot access economically without access to CSX’s main line in East Georgia.”
Sparta residents are also concerned that the railroad will allow the expansion of a nearby quarry that creates noise and dust. Another resident, Kenneth Clayton, 59, said that the work done in the quarry caused the roof of his house to collapse.
The mine is owned by Heidelberg Materials, a publicly traded German company, and Tarbutton said the mine is considering an expansion so that the noisiest part of its operation takes place away from its current location.
Quarry or not, Blaine Smith said nothing could convince him to willingly give up part of his land. The property in Sparta has been in his family for several generations.
“I grew up farming, we’re all out in the field, all that land where the railroad will cross,” said Smith.
Now, Smith plants timber on the land and relaxes by the local lake. He and his wife, Diane, live in Maryland, but come to Sparta several times a year.
The couple may return to Sparta fully, but they also want to protect their land for the benefit of future generations of Black farmers – a small part of the farming population that is already declining.
Diane Smith found Tarbutton’s attitude “powerful” when she spoke to them. It made his “blood boil badly” when he sent them dump notices before he had full legal authority to do so, he said.
Representatives of the Sandersville Railroad Co. they said Tarbutton tried to reach out to the Smiths and went to Maryland to meet with family members. The company carried out a “settlement” of the railway in response to their requests, and reached agreements with the owners of 9 of the 18 parcels required by the company.
Sandersville will be required by law to pay fair market value for any land it takes through the eminent domain process.
But the Smiths say they don’t get the money.
“We don’t want this in our backyard – or anywhere we can hear it, see it,” Blaine Smith said.
Charlotte Kramon is a member of the Associated Press/Reporting America Statehouse News Initiative team. Report for America is a national nonprofit service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on hidden stories. Follow Kramon on X: @ckramon
-Charlotte Kramon, Associated Press/American Report
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