THE BATTLE TO PRESERVE Crow’s Nest is at a critical fork in the road. One way leads to the preservation and enjoyment of this precious property for our children and posterity. The other way leads to clear-cutting of its forests, environmental degradation, and substantial development costs to county taxpayers.

Federal, state, and local officials have talked a good game about the need to protect Crow’s Nest. There has been positive action, as well. State bond money was set aside for purchase and the commonwealth recently approved a Stafford County application for a low-interest loan to buy Crow’s Nest.

But, yet again, the owners have raised the price bar to purchase the property many millions of dollars beyond reach. And, to up the ante, they have submitted a plan for by-right development. Maybe it’s time to discuss the “E” word as it relates to land conservation. That would be “eminent domain,” two words actually. Eminent domain is an authority that allows communities to acquire land. This authority has been in the news recently because of the Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London decision.

As someone who worked on economic reform in the former Soviet Union prior to moving to Fredericksburg in 1992, I would argue that the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision broke dangerous new ground. It allows a government to seize property to promote economic development. Thus, your family farm could be seized because your town decided that a mall might be better there.

But relevant to the Crow’s Nest case, eminent domain protects taxpayers from being held hostage by what economists call “holdouts,” or property owners who seek to extort windfall profits from the taxpayers when they own key property necessary to complete a proposed road, build a school, or acquire land for conservation. Alternatively, without eminent domain, property owners could just stop any movement on roads, schools, or parks by refusing to sell.

The framers of the Constitution carefully preserved the power of state and local governments to use eminent domain, as long as property owners whose land was “taken” were fairly compensated. In the past, even the most conservative members of the Supreme Court have been reluctant to unduly tie state and local governments’ hand in exercising their rights in this regard.