San Luis Obispo County officials have begun eminent domain proceedings to obtain the final parcels of land needed for the proposed Willow Road interchange in Nipomo.
The first step of the process involved passing a “resolution of necessity,” which the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in favor of on April 20.
The county has obtained eight of the 11 parcels needed for the project. Negotiations are still under way with the remaining property owners, but because of the state funding issues, county officials said it was necessary to begin eminent domain
proceedings in case negotiations are unsuccessful and the case ends up before a jury trial.
“Eminent domain is something we only ever want to use in the last extreme,” county right-of-way agent Phil Acosta said.
According to county documents, the interchange is needed to compensate for population growth in the Nipomo area. County officials had to begin eminent domain proceedings earlier than normal, in part because state projects utilizing federal stimulus money have to be “shovel ready” to qualify for funding.
“We needed to begin proceedings now in order to secure monies from the state allocated to the project,” Acosta said.
San Luis Obispo isn’t the only county having to start the eminent domain process early in order to secure state funding. In February, officials in Tulare County began eminent domain proceedings for a road-widening project. In that instance, according to county representatives, eminent domain proceedings began so that the county could show the state that their project was “shovel ready.”
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 6, 2010.