The “Battle for the Heart of Texas” documentary is set for its worldwide premiere at the EarthX Film Festival Friday May 13 in Dallas.
Directed and produced by John Claiborne Brown, of Wimberley, along with producers Jeffrey Brown and Kevin Booth and Associate Producer Paul Thomas, the documentary details the battle between Kinder Morgan and the landowners from the Hill Country over the construction of a oil-pipeline that runs from the Permian Basin to Houston while cutting through the middle of the Hill Country.
As the film synopsis states, in 2018, landowners across the pris tine Texas Hill Country began to receive telephone calls from agents working for Kinder Morgan – a billion dollar energy company armed with the power of eminent domain. These agents wanted their land to construct a 430-mile natural gas pipeline that would span Texas and cut through the environmentally sensitive areas in the Hill Country. For those in its path, the battle for property rights, the environment and the very idea of what it means to be a Texan were all at stake.
For John Brown, in his documentary directorial debut, the completion of the film was a four and half year project that he is thrilled to share with not only the state but across the nation as well.
“I’m very happy since it’s been a four year project,” Brown said. “It’s a long time to be working on one film, and it’s different from a lot of other films that we have worked on from a documentary standpoint. We are filming this in real time so everything that is happening with landowners across the hill country from Hays County, Blanco County, Gillespie County, Kimball County was all happening in real time. It’s a very involved topic, and I’m thrilled to have this out while starting the film circuit and eventually get to a broader platform so we can share this with the world.”
The reasoning for documenting the fight between the Kinder Morgan pipeline and the Hill Country landowners was when Brown was working at KWVH Wimberley Valley Radio Radio when he started receiving phone calls from landowners that an oil-pipeline was to be constructed without the consent of the landowners from the area.
“At that time I was the program director at the KWVH radio station,” Brown said. “We did a Monday night show called ‘Wimberley on Mic’ where we talked about all the politics going on in town and everything like that. This is where my introduction into this topic became real when we had landowners contacting and asking me if I knew about a pipeline coming through the area. I had no idea, so I started going through our county officials and other folks who were blindsided by this too. That’s when I decided, as a filmmaker, that this was a story I needed to follow, and I had no idea where it was going to go. But I felt like there was something going on that was out of the norm in the sense that a project like this size, scope, and length in the state of Texas could be greenlit without any public discussion, no community involvement for those along the path, no landowner opportunities to dissent, county officials or city officials had no idea what was going on. That was when I knew this was something that was very unique to the Hill Country.”
Brown has since learned companies like Kinder Morgan use eminent domain, the right of a government or its agent to force the purchase or lease of private property for public use, with payment of compensation, to put pipelines in the ground regardless of the opinion of the landowner.
“Since that time we found out this was very common in other parts of Texas as well as the United States about pipeline companies using eminent domain to put these things in,” Brown said. “The truth is there is a handful of these pipelines that operate within the Hill Country that are operational but those are pre-1972 so this was a very big decision to put one of the largest natural gas pipelines in the world through one of the most environmentally sensitive areas in the state which is responsible for the drinking supply of millions of people. That was when I knew that it needed to be more than just a discussion that needed to be documented.”
With over 46 interviews conducted, Brown also went out of state to film the documentary to showcase the Lincoln County pipeline explosion and the possible damage a pipeline could cause to a potential city where the pipeline runs through.
“There are 46 landowners, and/ or participants including lawyers, experts, people from different spectrums on this issue so there are over 46 interviews that we did across the state and country,” Brown said. “We traveled to Lincoln County, Kentucky to show what an example of a pipeline explosion was in 2019 when an Enbridge pipeline erupted. That was a great juxtaposition to where this pipeline exits the Hill Country and goes right through the middle of Kyle where there are 22,000 developments there and you put the juxtaposition in play and again why is there no oversight on these things?”
Despite the already heated topic on energy debates in a very heated political atmosphere, Brown hopes people can see the need for true eminent do main reform.
“My hope is that what people can takeaway is that naturally when people talk about energy infrastructure projects you become so divided along political lines,” Brown said. “You saw what happened with COVID, but I’m hoping that people can open their minds and understand that in a state that touts property rights being sacrasaint that it is the same state that allows private companies to use eminent domain to take people’s land for little money. What I hope people can take away from this is the need and necessity for true eminent domain reform at the state level.”
As Brown continued, many land owner organizations have fought for the need of eminent domain reform at the state but to little success.
“Something that has been approached by the Texas Farm Bureau Federation, Texas Wildlife Association, Southwest Cattlemen Association and many other landowner groups,” Brown said. “A lot of these groups are conservative groups but they have been pushing for eminent domain reform since 2011 with no results, so we hope to open the general public’s eyes that what is happening on the ground with these landowners in Texas and say, ‘We need some optics on this’ that provide some understanding of routing reform, who regulates pipelines and what the landowners true rights are in this process.”
Brown also stated he wanted the documentary to shine light on the community of the Wimberley Valley itself and its importance to the region.
“It’s interesting because as we rolled this out, we’ve been talking to other groups and landowners who are going through the same process right now in Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming and the list goes on and on,” Brown said. “One of the things I hope the film does is shine a light on Wimberley itself. Wimberley is such a unique place and the fact that our main source of revenue in this community is our water features and our environment. It’s a structure for all of our tax dollars that come in. The film really looks at the best of Wimberley and juxtaposes with what this pipeline looks like and what it did to this community and to those landowners that were here.”
As Brown continued, many people who have moved here do not know about the fight against the pipeline or that it is still ongoing so he hopes the film will also show the locals about the now ongoing fight.
“There are so many new people that have moved in here that are really completely unaware of that,” Brown said. “Even the people who were living here at the time didn’t understand the full scope of what this was. So my hope is, not only in Wimberley but across the Hill Country there was a lot of discussion about what this was, a lot of back and forth and this film really puts into perspective of what your friends and neighbors right here (are going through). And that it is still happening with it being an ongoing situation, because you have many landowners who fought this, went through the condemnation process, and still have yet to have their day in court even though this pipeline is up and running. It’s a big thing for people to know.”
In addition to the documentary’s debut with EarthX in Dallas, the film is also set to be presented at the Hill Country Film Festival June 4 at 11 a.m. in Fredericksburg.
