Originally Posted by
RootSkier
Yes, in fact it doesn't even need to be anywhere close to that big. I have actually been urging some public access groups to do this in MT for years via local governments. Ironically, the Legislature just this session prohibited counties from exercising eminent domain powers for purely recreational access purposes, because the Legislature is filled with fucking scumbags. But here was my theory before that happened, with references to Montana statutes:
I did some (very rough) math and it seems like condemning two adjacent corners approximately 2.5' wide (to make a 5'-wide path) would only require approximately ~8 square feet from each section. So you are only talking about condemning about 16 square feet for each corner. An acre is 43560 square feet so this is only .04% of an acre for each trail segment. I can't even do the math for a percentage of a section because it is almost incalculably small.
The condemnation statutes contemplate that in addition to fair market value of the property itself, the condemnation value includes the "basis of depreciation in the current fair market value of property not actually taken but injuriously affected." 70-30-302(1). This means--I think--that landowners could argue that they have a loss of value due to not being able to exclude people from adjoining public property. The interesting legal issue is that I would bet just about anything that the Montana Supreme Court would not allow a court to consider arguments that a private landowner is injured by the mere fact that the public now has access to land it already owns, or that the landowner "lost" anything by now having to deal with the public using its own land.
not legal advice blah fucking blah