Say Anything Blog

For those of you keeping track of the National Heritage Areas land grab story here in North Dakota (previous posts here, here and here) there’s a disturbing development.  According to the North Dakota Farm Bureau, the original legislation allowing these NHA’s to be created contained the following language allowing land owners to opt out:

Landowner withdrawal – Private property included within the boundary of the Heritage Area shall immediately be withdrawn from the Heritage Area if the owner of the property submits a written request to the management entity.

That language makes this land grab a lot more tolerable.  If land owners can opt out, no big deal right?  Well, the final version of this bill that passed Congress as a part of the 2009 Omnibus Land Management Act and was signed into law recently by President Obama didn’t contain this language.

Meaning that land owners can’t opt out of the National Heritage Area designation just plopped down (without most of the land owners knowing about it) on over 500,000 acres of land in North Dakota.

Compounding that problem is the fact that the version of the National Heritage Areas legislation posted on Northern Plains Heritage Foundation website (that’s the group that has been given regulatory control over these lands) is the old version that does contain the language allowing land owners to opt out.  Meaning that anyone going to the NPHF website is going to be mislead about the nature of this land grab.

So a) land owners are stuck now and b) the NPHF isn’t being honest with the public about the details of this bill.