There is a piece of land in Somerset County, Pennsylvania that has become the center of a dispute between the US government and the land’s owners. The land includes, and surrounds, the site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001. This is where the Boeing 757, which had been hijacked by terrorists, came down after a valiant, and successful, effort on the part of the passengers and crew, to prevent it’s use as a weapon to inflict death and destruction, most likely in Washington, D.C. It is believed that the plane was headed for the White House, in an attempt to do what the other planes, on that fateful day, did to the Pentagon and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. In other words, the hijackers intended to use this plane as a weapon. The passengers on this flight knew what the hijackers had in store for them and the country, and in a display of true heroism, decided to do everything in their power to stop them. They succeeded, but the cost was phenomenal. 40 crew and passengers died that beautiful fall day in 2001. We will never know how many lives were saved by their bravery. They truly gave their lives to defend our way of life.
Therein lies the problem that I have with the government’s plans for this memorial. According to the National Parks Service, this memorial will cover 2,200 acres. This does not merely encompass the crash site, but also a big chunk of the surrounding farm and wood land. Land that has been in some of these families for several generations. Now, if the owners are willing to sell this land to the government, and the government is willing to pay them what the land is truly worth, then there is no problem. Personally, I don’t understand why the memorial has to be 2,200 acres, but that is neither here nor there. The real problem is that there are some people who have not come to a decision about whether they want to sell their land to the government for them to build a memorial on. Some of this land is within several feet of the crash site, which is admittedly causing a problem, but there is also some land that is on the perimeter of where the National Park will be, further from the crash site. One family will lose 62 acres of their 100 acre homestead. So instead of changing the plans, making the memorial smaller, or checking for any other options, the government has decided to use Eminent Domain. Eminent Domain is a phrase that should strike fear into the heart of any land owner. It means that the government can offer you what they deem to be fair market value for your private property, and if you don’t want to sell, or think your land is worth more, and so won’t settle for their offer, they can simply take what is yours, and pay you what they want (their ideaof fair market value). They do this by stating that your private land is going to be put to public use. Public use can encompass the building of a strip mall, a parking lot, a highway, or anything else the local or federal government deems necessary. It doesn’t need to be a true necessity, the government just needs to feel it is. Personally, I believe that there are times that Eminent Domain may well be needed, and in those instances, the government should pay the owner for the property and even a little extra for the inconvenience involved. However, I do not think that the government should be able to pull out the Eminent Domain card every time someone doesn’t want to sell their land to them. Just because the government has decided that the city, county, state, or country cannot possibly live without their latest boondoggle (and I am not calling the memorial in Somerset County, PA, a boondoggle, merely the other 95% of Eminent Domain cases), doesn’t mean, when the owners of the piece of property that government officials have their eye on, won’t sell it to them, that they have the right to say “Too bad, this is for the good of the public, so we are going to buy it, whether you want to sell or not. Now get out.” In my opinion, that is wrong and it is against the general principals that this country was founded on. The government should never be able to just take property they want, for a project that may or may not be essential to the good of the public, if the owner of the property doesn’t want to sell. It is just not right.
The memorial in Somerset County, PA will be built. The parks service is saying that in order for this memorial to be ready for a ribbon cutting on September 11, 2011, the construction needs to begin by November. I wonder what the people who gave their lives on that fateful day would say if they knew the government was going to take the land of private citizens in order to build a 2,200 acre national park to honor them? Would they say, as I do, that the solution is to just make it smaller, and use the land they already have? Or would they say, take the land, because the public simply cannot continue to advance without this memorial. After all that is why Eminent Domain laws were originally written. So that when the government deemed that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, they could act in the best interest of the city, county, state, or country.
To the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 and especially to the families of the passengers of UA Flight 93, I will never forget what happened on that day, and the sacrifice that the passengers on that flight made, and am sure no one else will either. It is now as much a part of this country’s heritage as the Constitution, the fight for independence, the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and so many other things that have happened that shape who we are today. God Bless and keep you and yours.
For more info:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/29/flight.dispute/index.html?iref=hpmostpop
From My Corner Of The World 