CenterPoint Energy is not making any friends in the Maplewood West subdivision, according to this Chronicle story:
Behind Jim Laughlin’s home on Twin Hills in the Maplewood West subdivision is a garden replete with a rain tree, flower beds and crape myrtles he and his dad planted in a final, shared project before the elder Laughlin’s death.
His scenic back yard and those belonging to 22 of his neighbors were made possible more than three decades ago, when Houston Lighting and Power — now CenterPoint Energy — requested that residents extend their fence, landscape and maintain the utility company’s property easement backing their property. The arrangement more than quadrupled the size of the yards over the original lot’s dimensions.
It was also an unwritten agreement, leaving residents with no legal recourse in CenterPoint’s plan to take over its easement Nov. 1, tearing down wooden fences, digging up flower beds and cutting down trees that have long blocked the view of its power lines and steel towers.
“The crape myrtles my dad and I planted will be gone. All I’ll be able to see will be the power lines,” said Laughlin, 50. “The company says it doesn’t have a lease with us, we’re not a business, so they don’t have to honor the agreement.”
[snip]
His neighbor and fellow dog-owner Judith Watson said the plans will take a chunk — about 70 feet wide by 120 feet deep — of land from each yard fronting the CenterPoint easement, land each resident has mowed, landscaped, fenced and carefully maintained over the years.
[snip]
Emily Mir-Thompson, CenterPoint spokeswoman, said the company is still studying the plan to reclaim all of its 150 feet of right of way by Nov. 1, “but we are moving forward with that deadline.”
The decision, she said, was spurred in part by safety concerns stemming from the August 2003 power blackout in New York City and several other large cities.
“Since the blackout, there are regulations to make sure that the company’s transmission lines are reliable. We need to clear those rights of way and make sure we have access to our lines and our equipment,” Mir-Thompson said.
This looks bad, on the part of CenterPoint. Is the company saying that there are some new, mandatory regulations that must be followed, no matter what? There’s no room for compromise here? Because this seems terribly heavy-handed. For more than 30 years these residents have been caring for this property and improving it, and CenterPoint is now going to repay them by giving them a new fence. Well, big whoopee-ding. CenterPoint owes these homeowners more than new fencing. If CenterPoint is going to follow through on taking away these backyards, it needs to compensate homeowners for 30 years of property care and for the decrease in property values they are now going to suffer.
This is not how a company enhances its image and this is not being a good neighbor in a community. This just stinks. CenterPoint should either find a way for the residents to keep their backyards, or compensate them justly for their losses. A new fence doesn’t cut it.
And if the Chronicle has any sense of civic duty, the editors would get this story on the front page, of the A section. This sounds like one “bad guy” story the Chronicle should continue to pursue.
(Here’s KTRK-13’s coverage of this story.)
