Before a utility can condemn an easement for a new transmission line, the Public Utility Commission of Texas has to approve the route in a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity case. That case is the only place the line can be moved. We represent landowners in it.
If you received a landowner notice about a proposed transmission line, you are inside a PUC routing case, not yet a condemnation. You generally have 30 days from the date the utility filed its application to intervene. Intervening makes you a party: you can file testimony about your property, propose or oppose route segments, participate in settlement, and be heard before the Commission picks the route. Owners who do not intervene are not heard, and once the route is approved the only question left is price.
A transmission line reaches your land in two separate proceedings. The routing case is a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity (CCN) application at the Public Utility Commission under Utilities Code § 37.056. The utility files a study area with multiple alternative routes made of numbered segments, and the Commission picks one. The condemnation case comes afterward, parcel by parcel, under Chapter 21 of the Property Code, and it decides compensation and easement terms, not location.
Most landowner lawyers only handle the second case. By then the line is fixed. The routing case is where a well-documented objection can move a structure, shift a segment to follow an existing corridor, or take your tract out of the route altogether. Our Bexar County transmission line page covers the condemnation side; this page covers the routing side.
The utility holds public open houses and publishes a study area with preliminary alternative links. Comments here shape which segments make it into the application.
The utility files with the PUC and mails notice the same day to every owner whose land would carry an easement or who has a habitable structure within 300 feet of the centerline (230 kV or less) or 500 feet (above 230 kV). 16 TAC § 22.52.
Thirty days after filing for a new transmission facility. An owner who did not receive notice has 15 days from actually receiving it. Missing the deadline means you are not a party.
The case goes to the State Office of Administrative Hearings. Intervenors file direct testimony about their property, cross-examine the utility's routing witnesses, and often negotiate a settlement route with other landowner groups.
The administrative law judges issue a proposal for decision recommending a route. Parties file exceptions and replies.
The Commission selects the route in open meeting, sometimes modifying it on the spot as it did on Howard–Solstice. PURA § 37.154 gives it 180 days for a new line.
Motions for rehearing, then suit in Travis County district court. Reversal is rare; the practical fight is over before the order issues.
Survey requests, the Landowner's Bill of Rights, the bona fide offer and, if no agreement, condemnation in the county where the land lies. See how the condemnation case proceeds.
Utilities Code § 37.056(c)(4) requires the Commission to consider, in addition to need and cost, the effect of the route on community values, recreational and park areas, historical and aesthetic values, environmental integrity, and the use of existing compatible rights-of-way, including the prudent avoidance of habitable structures. Commission policy also favors routes that parallel existing transmission lines, pipelines, roads and property lines rather than bisecting tracts.
Every one of those factors is a fact question about specific land, and the utility's routing consultant evaluates them from aerial imagery and county data, not from your gate. The strongest intervenor testimony shows what the consultant could not see: the house site a family has planned for a decade, the hunting lease that funds the property taxes, the spring, the heritage oaks, the airstrip, the pivot irrigation, the conservation easement, the wildlife exemption, the cemetery.
CPS Energy and AEP Texas are filing more CCN cases in the San Antonio region than at any time since the CREZ build. The Howard–Solstice 765 kV order issued in September 2026 after hundreds of landowners intervened and changed the route. The next 765 kV line out of Bexar County, Blu Lacy–Howard through Bexar, Atascosa, Wilson and Karnes Counties, is expected to be filed in early 2027, and CPS Energy has 138 kV and 345 kV cases pending on the west, north and south sides of the county. Owners in a preliminary study area should prepare before the application is filed, because the 30-day clock starts on the filing date, not the date you open the envelope. The current list is on our Bexar County transmission line tracker.
Both are on the first page of the notice. The intervention deadline is 30 days from the filing date. Write it down.
Identify every numbered segment that crosses or approaches your land. Your intervention and testimony are organized around segments.
Owners on the same segments share the same interest. A coalition with one routing expert is far more persuasive, and far cheaper per owner, than a dozen individual filings.
Home sites, improvements, water, trees, operations, views. These become testimony exhibits.
We review the notice and route maps at no charge, tell you which segments matter, and file the intervention if you decide to proceed.
Routing cases are filed in Austin and heard at SOAH, so the law is statewide, but the facts are local. We represent owners in Bexar, Medina, Bandera, Atascosa, Wilson, Karnes, Kendall, Comal and Guadalupe Counties, and along the CPS Energy and AEP Texas routes running west toward the Permian Basin. If the line is approved across your land anyway, the same attorney carries the case into the condemnation.
A Certificate of Convenience and Necessity case is the Public Utility Commission proceeding in which a utility gets permission to build a new transmission line on a specific route. You received a notice because the utility's application shows an easement on your land, or a habitable structure on your land within 300 feet of a proposed centerline (500 feet for lines above 230 kV). The notice means you may intervene and be heard on the route.
Thirty days from the date the utility filed its application for a new transmission facility under PURA section 37.057. If you did not receive notice, you have 15 days from the date you actually received it. The deadline is printed in the notice.
Sometimes. The Commission chooses among the segments in the application and can modify them, and it weighs the effect on each affected property. Well-documented testimony and a specific lawful alternative have moved segments in many cases, including Howard–Solstice. There is no guarantee, and the Commission must pick some route, but owners who are not parties have no chance at all.
Our review of the notice and route maps is free. Representation in the routing case is usually handled on a flat or hourly basis, often shared across a landowner coalition on the same segments, and we explain the arrangement in writing before you decide. Fees for the later condemnation case, if one comes, are a separate arrangement.
Any owner can file comments or intervene on their own, and many do. A lawyer matters most when the stakes justify sworn testimony, a routing expert, cross-examination of the utility's witnesses, and settlement negotiations with the utility and PUC staff. For a working ranch or a planned subdivision, that is usually the case.
The routing case decides where the line goes and is handled at the PUC in Austin. Condemnation decides how much you are paid and what the easement says, and is handled in the county where your land sits under Chapter 21 of the Property Code. You cannot argue about the route in the condemnation case, and you cannot argue about the price in the routing case.
Every active CPS Energy and AEP line docket in Bexar County, and the easement-terms checklist for after the route is approved.
Learn moreThe approved route and what happens next for owners in Bexar, Medina, Bandera and Atascosa Counties.
Learn moreAdequate compensation, the bona fide offer, special commissioners and trial under Chapter 21.
Learn moreCommon-carrier status, the section 21.0114 easement terms, and remainder damage on ranch land.
Learn moreOffer letters carry deadlines. Call for a free review of the offer, the appraisal, and the easement terms.