Georgia community fights rail company trying to seize property through eminent domain

The thought of losing an inch of his family’s 600-acre property makes Mark Smith and his wife, Janet, wince.

“This is not the first time that someone has came after this land. My daddy struggled to keep it. And now here we are,” Smith said. “I can’t believe it, 100 years later, still struggling to hold onto it. When will it be over?”

Their land in Sparta, Georgia, has been an heirloom for nearly a century. Smith’s grandfather, a sharecropper, traded in his cotton harvest for the property in the Jim Crow-era South. 

The Smiths for years have been leading a coalition opposing a rail company’s plan to carve through private property with four and a half miles of new track, citing eminent domain — a legal strategy the government or private utility can use to seize citizens’ land in exchange for compensation if it’s deemed for the public good.

While the Smiths and their neighbors are resolved to keep fighting, their options may be running out.

About a dozen Sparta residents recently traveled more than 100 miles to an Atlanta courtroom for a legal challenge. But the community’s grasp appears to be slipping, as a state judge upheld a ruling in favor of the Sandersville Railroad Company.

Ben Tarbutton, president of the company, said that, while he feels the law is on his side, he’s open to discussing how both the rail company and the local Sparta community can benefit.

“We work really hard to try to come up with the most direct route, which affected the least amount of property,” Tarbutton told CBS News. 

Sparta Mayor Allen Haywood says he has sympathy for people like the Smiths, but he’s also looking at the $1.5 million economic bump the railroad company says it would provide to one of the poorest counties in Georgia.

Still, Smith’s coalition’s legal team is appealing the ruling.

For many in the community, it’s about what the new track would do to their way of life. For the Smiths, it’s about their family legacy being ripped away. 

“If you don’t like what we’re going to offer you, then we’ll take it and then you’ll have to take what we give you. There’s something very, very wrong with that,” Smith said.