Marsha Looper and Chuck Shaw with the Eastern Plains Citizen Coalition organized close to a thousand property owners and rallied as many protesters at the steps of the state capital on Tuesday, March 22 in the old Supreme Court Hearing Hall. Over 150 people testified against House Bill 05-1030: a bill that redefines a toll road, who may purchase a toll road and limits government involvement in the building and maintenance of the toll road. Citizens opposed to this bill came from counties all along the Front Range including El Paso, Elbert, Pueblo, Adams, Arapahoe and Weld.The purpose of this demonstration of unity was to stop developer Ray Wells and The Front Range Toll Road Company from building a toll road 25 miles east of I-25 from Wellington to south of Pueblo in what could be the largest abuse of eminent domain, or condemnation of land, in the history of the USA. An area equal to all of the state of Delaware and half of Rhode Island has been set aside as a so-called “corridor” for a four-lane highway, rail liners, electrical transmission lines and many other services. In El Paso County, that corridor runs from Meridian Road in Falcon east to Ellicott Highway in Calhan. This includes the boundary lines of 64W and 65W east 12 miles. The section in El Paso County runs from the Elbert County Line along the boundary line of 64W and 65W, east 12 miles to the Pueblo County Line. This includes over 10,175 parcels of property with a value over 1.2 billion dollars.The big question is why didn’t the secretary of state notify anyone in the 12-mile corridor of the pending cloud on the property titles? We believe it is the responsibility of the secretary of state to notify property owners of this pending project. Was our government asleep at the wheel again? Not only did the house overwhelmingly vote the bill through, the Senate Transportation Committee would have done the same thing if “The People” did not appear in the numbers they did the day of the hearing.The second question, since most of the traffic between Colorado Springs and Denver is commuter traffic: Will this toll road have any affect on the congestion? Are citizens going to drive 30 miles east of the Springs, and then pay a toll to drive north to Denver just to drive another 30 miles west to get back into the city? We do not believe this project will even allure the truck drivers. So the next question is are they using the toll road as a smoke screen and the real reason for the condemnation is for the development of the land and her resources such as water, natural gas, etc.?It is time for the citizens of Colorado to stand up against the abuses of developers and fight for our property rights. If anyone is interested in joining the Eastern Plains Citizen Coalition, please contact Marsha Looper at 719-238-5600 or MarshaLooper@direcway.com. A legal defense fund has been set up to pay for attorney fees and proposed legislation for property owners. The Eastern Plains Citizen Coalition is a non-profit, 501 (c); all contributions are tax-deductible and will be used wisely. Please send contributions to Marsha Looper, The Eastern Plains Citizen Coalition, P.O. Box 293, Peyton, Colorado 80831. Please visit the Web site of www.superslab.org for more information about meeting dates and times.Marsha LooperPeyton
