A Black farm-owning couple in Georgia is in the middle of a legal battle to take back a portion of land seized by the state government to be used for a new rail line in a predominantly Black rural community.
Blaine and Diane Smith joined several other property owners in Sparta, Georgia, in filing a joint petition against the Sandersville Railroad Company after the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the business’s request to condemn their land to make way for its Hanson Spur project.
Sandersville first filed a petition last March to acquire part of the property belonging to another generational landowner in Sparta under the state’s eminent domain power, which allows government agencies to take private property for public use, even if property owners don’t want to sell. However, the state must justly compensate the owners and the properties must be condemned before they’re seized.
Other property owners, including the Smiths, whose parcels would also be required for the spur line, challenged Sandersville’s petition, expressing their desires to retain possession of all their land.
Then, in July 2023, Sandersville amended its initial request to ask the state to condemn portions of land belonging to all the property owners who contested its petition. That request was approved in April 2024 and the PSC upheld that decision in September.
Sandersville noted that the industrial rail line will transport construction materials and agricultural products and reduce the number of trucks that use Hancock County roads to haul these materials. The company also said the spur will create $1.5 million in direct economic impact in the county yearly.
“The Hanson Spur, along with the future expansion of the Hanson Quarry, will be the single largest private investment in Hancock County history, bringing more jobs, new opportunities and added tax revenue to the area,” Sandersville’s website states.
However, the Smiths aren’t convinced that the project is worth giving up even a small portion of their land, where they farm timber crops.
“If you listen to the railroad folks, they say ‘you’re keeping your land, we’re just taking a little piece of it,’” Blaine Smith told Atlanta News First. “But they’re devaluing it; they’re defacing it; they’re creating hazards through it.”
According to Sandersville’s petition, the company would need 7 percent of the Smiths’ land for the rail line’s construction. The group also requested the state allot them between two and seven percent of other parcels in Hancock County belonging to neighboring property owners.
Blaine Smith said his enslaved ancestors worked the county land he and his wife now own.
“My father farmed this land; my grandfather farmed it during most of his life,” Smith said. “He bought it back in the 1920s. During that time, he raised cotton, corn, peas, all kinds of vegetables. It’s still in the Smith family. Not one piece of it had gotten away.”
Sandersville Railroad Company President Ben Tarbutton said he understands families’ concerns about generational legacy, but “the condemnation process is the last resort.”
Tarbutton stated the company has “had multiple conversations with the landowners,” and seeks to keep negotiations open with others who have concerns.
According to Atlanta News First, multiple property owners have made deals with Sandersville, but three families, including the Smiths, are waiting out their battle with Sanderson and the state.
“I go back to what my father said,” Blaine Smith said. “‘Keep the land.’ The land gives you respectability. Everybody around here knows this is the Smith land.”
The Smiths are being represented by the Institute for Justice, whose attorneys argue that Sandersville is conducting land grabs to build a track for the private use of its partners when the law clearly states the land seized under eminent domain must be for public use.
“What the railroad has shown is that this track — if it even comes about — is going to promote the profits and the cost reductions for a couple of private companies and that’s all,” IJ attorney Betsy Sanz said.
“Georgia law does not permit a private company to take land through eminent domain unless the land will be put to a public use,” IJ Senior Attorney Bill Maurer stated in September. “Building a rail spur that will only be used by a few private companies, and not the public at large, is not a public use.”
According to U.S. Census records, Hancock County, located in east central Georgia, was home to more than 8,600 people in 2023, 68.7 percent of whom were Black and 28.9 percent were white.
