Path of Resistance Osteen residents feel blindsided by law from Depression era giving Volusia County access to their …

Published: Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 9:37 p.m. Last Modified: Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 10:36 p.m.

About two miles down the rural highway from Byron and Catherine Peavys house, a bulldozer has been clearing a path in their direction.

At their house, behind an automatic gate with a stenciled sign that shouts: VOLUSIA COUNTY WANTS TO TAKE OUR LAND, the Peavys have been waiting for it to reach their front yard.

Rather, what they thought was their front yard.

The Peavys are two of the latest Florida residents to discover land they believed was theirs has been reserved for government use dating back to the Depression era.

The reason is the Murphy Act, a 1937 bailout program that eventually returned tax-defaulted land to private property owners on a few conditions. Among those conditions: The government could come back and claim strips of those lands to improve or expand roads.

So, 77 years after it passed, the Murphy Act is still working, this time to build a section of the East Central Regional Rail Trail, a 52-mile hiking-biking project that will eventually span the county. In Osteen, people like the Peavys say the law is working against them, taking property they thought they owned free and clear.

Volusia County officials say the law is working on behalf of taxpayers because Murphy reservations belong to everyone, and they spare the millions of dollars governments would otherwise have to pay for miles and miles of road right of way.

Whats right in America today is wrong, and whats wrong is right, Byron Peavy said recently in a living room that has sort of become the Murphy oppositions base. Theyre every bit right to take that land, he said of the countys legal claim. But its wrong to do it.

We have an obligation, with it being available to the public, countered Jerry Brinton, the Volusia County engineer overseeing the project. Wed be criticized if we did anything other than use it for what it was intended for.

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Path of Resistance Osteen residents feel blindsided by law from Depression era giving Volusia County access to their ...