Opinion ID: 365554
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Shallow water

Text: 31 Once the reservoir is filled, the property retained by the landowners will have an extensive shoreline. The water in this part of the lake will be extremely shallow. Moreover, the level of the water in the lake will rise and fall daily because Lake Wallace will be a pump-storage facility. This variation in the water's depth, coupled with the shallowness of the reservoir in the area of Dyar's property, will cause a substantial daily movement of its shoreline. In the southern portion, it will move in and out up to 200 feet horizontally each day; consequently, vast mudflats will often be exposed. 32 Expert witnesses for both parties testified that the portion of the Dyar property with shallow water will be less valuable than the portion with deeper water. One witness estimated that the value of this property will be one-third less than if it had deeper water. The commission, however, made no specific allowance for this factor. It explained its failure to do so on the basis that it relied exclusively on adjusted comparables sales. 33 In valuing the property retained after the taking, the commission cited the conclusions of the experts who testified, but did not itself adjust the sales these experts cited as being comparable. All of these experts clearly took the shallow water into account in their testimony. For purposes of comparison with the retained Dyar property, two of them adjusted downward the sales prices of those properties they considered comparable having water depth superior to that of the Dyar property. In addition, they included a comparable property that has even shallower water than the Dyar property will have, and adjusted its sale price upward to account for this factor. Based on his analysis of the adjusted comparables he had selected, one of these two experts concluded that the remaining Dyar property was worth $900 per acre. The other concluded that it was worth $850 per acre. The third expert, who testified for the landowners, neither considered any sales involving property with water shallower than that on the Dyar property, nor adjusted each comparable separately for this factor; in order to take it into account, however, he reduced by one-third the estimated value he obtained based on the comparables he considered. He also included a discount factor for holding time until the lake is ready for use. The commission considered this to be improper, and, therefore revised his figure of $668 per acre to $813 per acre. 34 The commission concluded that the remaining Dyar property is worth $850 per acre, which is less than or equal to the value given by two of the experts even after taking the shallow water into account. The commission would have arrived at a higher value for the property than it did if it had not accepted the adjustments these experts made to take into account the shallow water. Its reliance on the testimony of the experts regarding the influence of this factor, rather than attempting to make its own specific adjustments to each comparable sale to take it into account, was not clearly erroneous. 35