Miami-Dade County is gearing up for a major legal fight over the only fuel supply for Port Miami, after commissioners voted to pursue eminent domain to regain control of it. The decision sets the stage for a contest between the county and a private landowner over an asset that the county argues is essential to the operation of the port.
Eminent domain is the government's legal right to take land for public use in exchange for fair compensation. By invoking it, Miami-Dade is moving to take control of the property that holds the port's fuel supply, rather than continuing to rely on negotiations with the current owner to secure access to it.
At the center of the dispute is land on Fisher Island where the port's fuel tanks sit. According to the county, the property was bought last year by a private developer, HRP Group, putting the fuel supply that the port depends on into private hands and prompting the county to act to bring it back under public control.
Commissioner Oliver Gilbert was blunt about the county's view of the situation. He said the buyers had purchased the property with the understanding that the county needed it and had then held it hostage, adding that there are courts for that. If the two sides cannot negotiate a lower price, he said, then a court and a jury will be left to decide what the property is worth.
For its part, the new owner pushed back. In a statement, HRP Group said that the only question now is how much of the public's time and money the mayor is willing to waste to obscure the numerous poor decisions that, in the company's words, had been made over decades, framing the county rather than itself as the source of the problem.
There have also been questions about whether the county could simply build a new fuel facility somewhere else to avoid the fight altogether. The county hired an outside engineering firm to examine the options, and that firm concluded the alternatives could cost anywhere from 733 million to 1.2 billion dollars, underlining why the county is instead pressing ahead with eminent domain.