Behind the Woodshed: TVA

OK, let’s face facts. When it comes to bad neighbors, there are horror stories and then there’s TVA. What these guys have done make a crooked fenceline or stray livestock look like the county fair. Can anyone imagine what it must be like to have 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge running loose on their property? I can’t, but there are plenty of people in Roane County downriver from TVA’s Kingston Steam Plant who can. And they filed a $165 million suit to prove it. Here’s the AP story:

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Obama to Nominate Salazar for Interior

Landowners in the West will have one of their own heading up the Interior Department in the new Obama Administration. According to published reports, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) will be named the 50th Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior later this week by President-elect Barack Obama. Read more

Brazil to Issue Deeds to Thousands of Landowners in the Amazon Basin

Brazilians have long feared that foreigners were exploiting great expanses of the Amazon River Basin, a story we covered earlier this year when the Brazilian government began to investigate unlawful land sales to overseas interests. Now the country has established a program to ascertain ownership of farms of all sizes and streamline the process by which landowners can get deeds to their property. The root cause of this initiative? Less than 4 percent of privately owned land in the Amazon is actually deeded. Read more

North Dakota Bucks the Recession

The rest of the U.S. may have fallen into a recession, but at the north end of the Great Plains a robust economy and a tight labor supply is keeping North Dakota humming. Unemployment rate? Holding steady at 3.4 percent. New car sales? Up 27 percent. Foreclosure rate? Among the nation’s lowest. And the primary legislative budget issue? What do with a $1.2 billion surplus. What about land prices? Read more

Chesapeake Gets $3+ Billion Injection for Marcellus Shale

So the bottom has fallen out of the energy markets and commodity prices are dropping even lower. Next step? Time to welcome the overseas investors. Remember, folks, we’ve got trillions of dollars of assets tied up in land, and all of it is protected by Old Glory. No matter how bad Wall Street is faring, no matter how low consumer confidence drops, there are plenty of eagle-eyed investors with very deep pockets who look at our timberland, our shorelines, our minerals, and even our water, and what do they see? Read more

Slowdown Forecast for Texas Land

Ag economists at Texas A&M are predicting that the red-hot Texas land market will lose its sizzle next year. Since 2003, land prices have increased an average of 14.5 percent annually, and with the median price statewide approximately $2,300 per acre, that means the average price would jump to $4,600 per acre by 2013. According to the Aggies, that’s not going to happen. Here’s why: Read more

Top Ethanol Producer Files For Bankruptcy

One of the leading stories of 2008 has been skyrocketing commodity prices and the corresponding surge in land values throughout the Midwest, Great Plains, Southwest, and other mineral-rich areas of the country. Although the bubble has by no means burst, there are definitely signs of a slowdown, particularly given the recent bankruptcy filing by one of the nation’s largest ethanol producers, VeraSun Energy Corp. Read more

JOE Reports 3Q Loss

Florida’s largest private landowner, The St. Joe Company, reported a third quarter net loss of $19.2 million (21 cents a share) on Tuesday. JOE’s President and CEO Britt Greene cited the global financial crisis and the dowturn in the Florida. Now for the good news. Read more

68,000-acre Onyx Ranch in California Sells for $48 million

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning on a huge transaction in California: the 68,000-acre Onyx Ranch in the Sierra Nevada Mountains just outside of Bakersfield sold for $48 million ($705 per acre) to a joint partnership of the CIM Group, a leading urban development group, and Los Angeles-based Renewable Resources Group. Given present credit markets, the acquisition was funded by equity. Read more

Native Americans Harvest the Wind

Each Friday I scan the Escapes section of The New York Times for an urban take on life in the hinterland. But the keeper in today’s Times was not in the Escapes section but in National: Felicity Barringer’s report on how the 29,000 Rosebud Sioux are turning to wind power for economic sustenance. Read more

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