In the 1940s the City purchases the surface estate of lands that eventually are inundated by Lake Houston, the City's primary source of drinking water. They adopt a series of ordinances designed to prevent pollution of the lake. The 1977 ordinance clearly expands the no-drill area to a buffer zone of 1,000 feet from the boundaries of Lake Houston. In the late 1980s, Maguire engages in several failed attempts to test a reservoir that is partially underneath the lake. It receives a permit to drill within 300 feet of Lake Houston in 1991. After the expenditure of nearly $200,000 in preparatory work, the City issues a stop work order and revokes the permit. After being told by numerous City officials that no permit would be issued, Maguire files an inverse condemnation and promissory estoppel claim. An earlier Court of Appeals decision affirms the dismissal of Maguire's negligent misrepresentation claim but remands for a trial on the other claims. Maguire Oil Co. v. City of Houston, 69 S.W.3d 350, 154 0.&G.R. 428 (Tex.App.—Texarkana 2002, pet denied). After being sent to the County Civil Court at Law the inverse condemnation claim is dismissed as unripe. Held: reversed and remanded. In order to bring an inverse condemnation claim, the governmental entity charged with implementing the regulation that allegedly causes the taking must have reached a final decision. The City claims that Maguire should have appealed the permit revocation decision to the City Council in order to satisfy the ripeness requirement Under the terms of the ordinance, however, there is an absolute prohibition against drilling within ImOOO feet of Lake Houston. The ordinance also delegates permit decision-making authority to the Director of Public Works and Engineering. The court also finds that even if an appeal was possible, which the court does not find authorized, such an appeal would have been futile. A final decision need not be sought if the appeal would be futile. In this case, the City Council was not in a position to issue the drilling permit, nor could it have done so without amending the ordinance. Since the case is ripe for review it should have been tried on the merits of the inverse condemnation claim.
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