Peach and walnut orchards in Olivehurst are worth $1 million more than the government paid when acquiring the land by eminent domain for Feather River levee work, a jury decided Tuesday.

"There was nothing we could do," landowner Satinder Davit, 79, said after the verdict in Yuba County Superior Court about the Three Rivers Levee Improvement Authority in Marysville paying $1.8 million for his 99 acres along Ella Avenue. "It was unfair."

After about two hours of deliberation, jurors decided the property is worth $2.8 million. Davit in the trial had sought $3.4 million.

Directors of the joint powers agency voted in June 2007 to acquire the property by eminent domain.

Davit's attorney, Gary Livaich, said Three Rivers wasn't interested during settlement conferences before trial in making an offer to resolve the case.

"They wanted to see what the jury would say on value," Livaich said. "Today they got their answer."

Three Rivers has 30 days to pay Davit the additional funds, Livaich said.

Jury foreman Travis O'Neal, 44, a U.S. Postal Service carrier who lives in Marysville, said Three Rivers was "going for the lowest, lowest price there was."

"This is prime land," O'Neal said.

Three Rivers, created in 2004 to oversee levee improvements in south Yuba County, left Davit after the eminent domain action with about 5 acres of a triangle-shaped property the landowner could do little with, O'Neal said.

Attorney Stacey Sheston, representing Three Rivers, said eminent domain doesn't allow the government to take more property than needed for a project.

Sheston said 90 percent of the dozens of cases involving land acquisition for the levee work have been successfully resolved without going to trial.

"We don't think it was unfair," Sheston said.

Paul Brunner, executive director of Three Rivers, said the agency had tried to settle the case.

"This is one of the few that went to court," Brunner said of acquiring land for the levee project, which is expected to be completed in the summer of 2009. "We will try to continue to work with the other families."

During closing arguments Tuesday morning, Sheston said Davit's land was worth less than the $35,000 an acre Davit sought.

"Nobody ever paid it," Sheston said of that price. "Not even at the peak of the market."

Sheston said the 99 acres were worth $1.8 million and $18,500 an acre.

But Livaich said the agricultural property next to Feather River Boulevard is "strategically situated" where rooftops are replacing farms and that the land was worth $3.4 million.

"Look at it," Livaich told jurors as he held an aerial photo of the property. "This is not an agricultural area. It once was. But it's not anymore."

Livaich said in court Tuesday that landowners in eminent domain proceedings have no choice and must sell their property.

But the United States Constitution, the attorney said, requires government pay fair market value.

Arthur Gimmy, who appraised the Olivehurst land for Davit, is a UCLA graduate whose appraisals include the Hearst Ranch in San Simeon and an easement at Beale Air Force Base, the attorney said.

Davit's property is near Highway 70, designated as a primary route to job centers in Sacramento, Livaich said.

"The evidence is overwhelming," the attorney said in asking for the $3.4 million value for the property.

Sheston, however, said in court that the value of property was in serious decline as of June 2007.

David Wraa, who appraised the property for Three Rivers, is a University of California, Davis graduate. The land he valued is west of Feather River Boulevard where "there's no residential development," Sheston said.

"This is a really nice orchard," Sheston said of Davit's land.

But it's not an urban area, she added.

"There's really no point in trying to dress it up as something it's not," Sheston said.

Contact Appeal reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or rmcarthy@appeal-democrat.com.