re: The Wall and the Land it will take to build it.

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So you don’t understand how bills become law either? How quaint...

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i totally understand how bills become law, but this is Donald Trump's government, not Nancy Pelosi's

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Read the details. It says most of the cases are about payout but not all of them. Now you are talking about a significantly longer right of way.

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Which is why I asked you to name one case. So we could get the precise details.

K thanks. So from $250 to $500 per acre would be fair market value so to speak... a lot more complicated to get to the exact figure but that is cheap land...

Negotiating with the ranchers in TX will get easier as the wall is built and illegals are funneled toward their unwalled property...

Look, I am not arguing against fair or even better than fair compensation for anyone that has property taken in this instance but you know there is going to be that one rancher that thins his land is worth 10k an acre...

If they don’t want to negotiate in good faith then build the wall where you can first...

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Is the Rio Grande used as a water source? I know in the Hatch and Mesilla Valleys of NM they use canals to irrigate crops. When you get down to the valley below El Paso they use wells. In fact in Ft Hancock which sits along the banks of the Rio Grande the land is idle because the groundwater is too salty and for whatever reason they can't/don't take water from the river.

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Depends upon where on the border we are talking about.

Once you get a few mile east of El Paso, the land gets REALLY rugged and useless for farming. For hundreds of miles (basically until you get well past Del Rio), it is only ranching. The ranches run right up to the river, and livestock (cattle and sheep mostly, but also goats) walk right up to the river and drink.

The topography is small mountains and BIG hills, with huge gullies and ravines running all through it. The gullies and ravines are FILLED with NASTY, sharp vegetation (mostly catclaw and mesquite). The grass (such as it is) grows mostly along the ridgelines. The land gets flatter as you move north, until you get some decent flat land ten or twenty miles in from the Rio.

When it DOES rain, the ravines and gullies become raging floods, because the soil is so rocky that almost nothing saturates into the soil. Most people use the larger dry river beds as roadways most of the year. All larger ranches have a bulldozer, because you are constantly fixing roads that were damaged by floodwaters. All that water flows eventually to the Rio Grande.

I THINK the situation is the same between Del Rio and and about Laredo, but a good bit flatter. Downriver (beginning maybe 100 miles down from Laredo) is the start of the "Valley," where intensive farming (including lots of citrus) starts to take over. I understand that they DO a lot of irrigation down there direct from the Rio, but I have no firsthand knowledge. We have never leased anything much further downriver than the Laredo area. Even that was almost 40 years ago, and I was quite young, so I am a big foggy on the details. (I do remember shooting javelina from a chopper).

Back to far West Texas, the Rio is certainly NOT the ONLY water source, but people tend to use it as the PRIMARY water source in pastures adjacent to the Rio ... because it is reliable. There are also windmills, which are not too deep usually. In drought, they often go dry.

Some people also set up rainwater cisterns, but not many.

Further into Texas from the river, there are not many continuous rivers/creeks and only a few natural springs. As such, you tend to see lots more windmills (often several per pasture) and even surface ponds. BTW, a "pasture" in far West Texas is often larger than an entire RANCH further east. Most of our pastures were 20 sections or larger.

Was that helpful?

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Was that helpful?

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Yes, thanks.