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Right of Way · Eminent Domain &On August 28, 2026 the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved two Oncor 765-kilovolt transmission projects running from Somervell County to the Culberson–Reeves county line. This page tracks what has been approved, which counties are affected, and what landowners in the corridor should expect next. We update it as the dockets move.
Almost every condemnation case is a fight about a number, not about the law.
Both were approved on the same day, by the same order date, and they connect end to end at Longshore Switch in Howard County. If you own land anywhere along this corridor, one of these is yours.
Dinosaur Switch, about 3 miles north of Glen Rose in Somervell County to Longshore Switch, about 4.5 miles west of Forsan in Howard County.
Counties: Brown, Callahan, Coke, Coleman, Comanche, Erath, Glasscock, Hood, Howard, Runnels, Somervell, Sterling, Taylor
Full project page & route map →Longshore Switch, about 4.5 miles west of Forsan in Howard County to Drill Hole Switch, about 6 miles west of US 285 near the Culberson–Reeves county line.
Counties: Andrews, Culberson, Ector, Howard, Loving, Martin, Reeves, Winkler
Full project page & route map →Almost every condemnation case is a fight about a number, not about the law.
A photo of the offer is enough — a senior consultant reads it and tells you what we see.
Text (469) 484-7960 →Four documented matters, each traced from the original offer letter to final settlement — two utility easements and two highway condemnations, labelled on each. Not an average and not a prediction; when we look at yours and think the number is close to right, we tell you so. National ROW is a right-of-way consulting firm, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice.
One page showing both approved centerlines and the mileage in each of the 20 counties, drawn from Oncor’s own published route data. Print it, take it to your appraisal district, or send it to whoever is advising you.
Enter an address to see roughly how far it sits from the approved centerline. You can also open the interactive map, which shows the approved route in gold and the alternative routes that were studied and not selected — useful if you were notified during the docket but are no longer on the chosen route.
Tell us about your property. A senior consultant reads every one of these and calls you within the hour, 8am–6pm Central, Monday to Friday. Outside those hours, first thing the next morning.
Your case is in review. A senior consultant reads everything you shared and calls you within the hour, 8am–6pm Central, Monday to Friday. Outside those hours, first thing the next morning.
In the meantime, don't sign anything and don't feel pressured to respond to their representatives.
Twenty Texas counties, from the Brazos country west of Fort Worth all the way to the Permian Basin.
Texas has run its transmission backbone at 345 kilovolts since the 1960s. Nothing about that changed until the load did. Two things are happening at once in West Texas: the oil and gas industry is electrifying operations that used to run on gas engines, and an entirely separate wave of demand — data centers, cryptocurrency mining, industrial load — has arrived in places that never had it. ERCOT's planning work and the Permian Basin Reliability Plan both concluded the existing network cannot move that much power.
The case for 765 kV is a land-use case as much as an engineering one. By Oncor's published figures, one 765 kV line carries the capacity of three double-circuit 345 kV lines. Doing the same job at 345 kV would take roughly 480 feet of corridor; the 765 kV line takes 200. Fewer corridors, fewer landowners affected in total — but each one affected more.
This is Texas's first major voltage step in sixty years, and the technology itself is not experimental: there are more than 2,400 miles of 765 kV line already operating in the U.S. and Canada.
It means the line is going to be built. Landowners, county governments and conservation groups filed extensive protests in both dockets. The Texas Attorney General filed an amicus brief asking the Commission to hold off pending legislative review. The Commission approved both projects anyway, unanimously.
We say that plainly because the alternative — telling you there is a fight left over whether the line crosses your place — would waste the months when you actually have leverage. Route selection is over. Compensation is not. That is where the remaining money is, and it is a lot of money: the difference between an offer that prices only the strip and one that properly accounts for severance damages and cost to cure is routinely a multiple, not a percentage.
Send us the letter, the plat, or just your county and the nearest crossroads. We will tell you where your land sits against the approved centerline — and what a first offer on this route usually leaves out.
Free review by a senior consultant →Or call or text (469) 484-7960 — a senior consultant answers owners the same day.
These two projects are not the end of it. Oncor's own public certificate mapping currently tracks twenty transmission projects — about half already filed with the Commission and about half still in the study phase where routes are being drawn. Three more 765 kV projects are already filed with the Commission and awaiting a decision, and together they would cross far more Texas ground than the two approved routes:
If you were notified about any of these three, you are still in the routing window, not the compensation window — and the routing window is the one where landowner comments have actually moved routes.
Practically, that means two different situations, and they call for two different responses:
We track the dockets either way. If you tell us where your property is, we will tell you which of these you are in.
See all five dockets, county by county, on one page → — status, filed-corridor counts, and which of the 51 affected counties sit in more than one case.
An easement is not a sale of your land. You keep title, you keep paying taxes on it, and in most cases you keep grazing or farming it. What you give up is control of a strip — permanently. Understanding exactly what you are giving up is what turns a number on a page into a number you can argue with.
Oncor's published specification for its 765 kV lines is a 200-foot right-of-way. For comparison, Oncor puts a single double-circuit 345 kV line at 160 feet, and notes that carrying the same power with 345 kV lines would take roughly 480 feet of corridor. So 765 kV is a wider strip than most Texas landowners have dealt with before, and it is the reason a single line can serve so much load.
Two hundred feet is 24.2 acres for every mile the line crosses your property. Half a mile across your place is roughly twelve acres encumbered forever.
These lines are built on self-supporting steel lattice towers. Lattice structures sit on four legs with a footprint measured in tens of feet on a side, set in concrete foundations. They are not something you mow around. Where a tower lands on your property matters enormously — for pivot irrigation, for field patterns, for equipment turning room, and for what the place looks like from your house.
The strip itself is the easy part to value. The harder and usually larger question is what happens to the rest of your property: the remainder. A line that cuts a ranch into two pieces, that sits in the view from the homesite, that severs a field from its water, or that puts a tower in the middle of a pivot circle damages land the utility is not paying for by the acre.
A senior consultant will walk your numbers with you — the easement acreage, what it does to the remainder, and the value the first offer tends to leave on the table. No cost and no obligation.
Free review by a senior consultant →Or call or text (469) 484-7960 — a senior consultant answers owners the same day.
When the offer arrives it will not say "here is our opening bid." It will arrive as a package: a cover letter, an appraisal or a summary of one, a plat showing the part being acquired, an easement document already drafted, and in most cases a deadline. It is designed to look final. It is not final.
Every legitimate offer breaks down into the same three components. Find them, because the way they are weighted tells you where the offer is weak.
| Component | What it pays for | Typically |
|---|---|---|
| Value of the part acquired | The strip itself, priced per acre against comparable sales | Largest single line |
| Damages to the remainder | Lost value to everything you keep — severance, access, layout, view, marketability | Frequently understated |
| Cost to cure | What it costs to fix what the taking broke — fences, gates, water lines, crossings, re-routed roads | Frequently omitted |
How much does the back half matter? In one recent Texas offer package our team reviewed, damages to the remainder made up about 39% of the total offer and cost to cure another 29% — nearly seven of every ten dollars came from something other than the raw land price. That package was a highway acquisition rather than a transmission easement, so the specifics differ. The structure does not. If your offer is almost entirely a per-acre land number with little or nothing for damages and cure, that is not because your property has none. It is because nobody quantified them.
The utility's appraiser works for the utility. That does not make them dishonest — it makes them narrow. These are the categories that routinely go unquantified.
Tap each one to see what it means on your tract.
A 200-foot high-voltage corridor can reduce the market value of your whole tract, not just the strip. Buyers price the line in.
If the corridor cuts your property into pieces, the pieces are worth less than the whole. That loss is compensable and is often the largest single item.
Fences, gates, cattle guards, water lines, field roads, and crossings that have to be rebuilt because of the taking.
Construction access and permanent restrictions take acres out of production during and after the build.
Towers in a pivot circle, restricted equipment height, and lost turning room have real, calculable cost.
Trees cleared for the corridor have value as timber and as shade, screening, and habitat — not as bare dirt.
Distance from your home, barns, or a planned homesite affects both livability and what the place sells for.
Workspace outside the permanent strip is separately compensable and is easy to under-price or leave out entirely.
Send it over with their appraisal if they gave you one — a photo of the pages is enough. A senior consultant reads it and tells you what their number left out, what we would argue for, and whether it can be moved.
Free review by a senior consultant →Or call or text (469) 484-7960 — a senior consultant answers owners the same day.
We are on the owner's side of the right-of-way. We are paid out of the increase, which means we do not get paid unless you do better.
Send us whatever they sent you — a survey permission form, a letter, an appraisal, an offer. We read it and tell you plainly where it is weak. No charge, no obligation.
We bring in independent, certified appraisers to value the part acquired and, critically, to document damages to the remainder and cost to cure.
We deal with the land agents and their appraisers directly, with documentation behind every number, so you are not negotiating alone against people who do this full time.
Our fee is a percentage of the increase above the original offer. If we do not improve it, you owe us nothing.
Tap any question to see the answer.
765 kilovolts is the highest transmission voltage in common use in North America. Texas has run its grid backbone at 345 kV since the 1960s. The move to 765 kV is driven by load growth in West Texas — oil and gas electrification in the Permian Basin plus data centers and cryptocurrency mining — and by the fact that one 765 kV line moves roughly the power of three double-circuit 345 kV lines in a corridor about 200 feet wide instead of roughly 480 feet.
As of September 2026, the Public Utility Commission of Texas has approved two Oncor 765 kV projects, both on August 28, 2026: Dinosaur Switch to Longshore Switch (Docket 59315, Route 559, 242.6 miles) and Longshore Switch to Drill Hole Switch (Docket 59029, Route 476, 181.6 miles). Together that is 424 miles across 20 counties. Additional 765 kV segments, including Big Hill to Sand Lake, have been filed but not yet decided.
Oncor specifies a 200-foot permanent right-of-way for its 765 kV lines, which is about 24.2 acres per mile. Across the 424 approved miles that is roughly 10,300 acres of private Texas land placed under permanent easement.
Use the map on this page or on the individual project page, and confirm against Oncor's official interactive viewer and the filed constraints maps, which we link in the sources. If you have already received a letter, the project name is on it. If you are not sure which project a letter belongs to, send it to us and we will identify it.
Realistically, no. Once the PUCT has approved a route, the utility holds the power of eminent domain and the line will be built. Route selection is the phase where landowner input changes outcomes, and that phase is over for these two projects. What is still open — and it is worth real money — is what you are paid and what the easement document actually says.
No. National ROW is a right-of-way and condemnation consulting firm representing property owners only. We do not provide legal advice and no attorney-client relationship is created by contacting us. When a case needs a lawyer, we say so and coordinate with condemnation counsel.
Send it to us. We will tell you which docket it belongs to, where you sit on the route, and whether what they are offering is in the range it should be. Free, no obligation.
Free review by a senior consultant →Or call or text (469) 484-7960 — we answer owners the same day.
County lists and tract counts on this page were derived by measuring Oncor's own published approved-route geometry against public county boundaries and Oncor's public tract layer. They are close, not surveyed. Verify your specific parcel against the official filings before relying on anything here.
