I understand mineral rights and surface property rights are often separated in most places in the United States. I also understand that the mineral rights holder has the legal right to extract the minerals regardless of permission from the surface property owner if that person is not themselves.
That’s pretty much all I understand.
This being the US I understand answers may vary by jurisdiction, but that said, my main questions are:
Does that mean the mineral rights holder can just show up with equipment and start tearing up my property without any notice?
If they do, are they required to restore the surface property?
What if they decide my house or some other structure is inconveniencing their mining operation? Can they just knock it down?
What rights do the surface property owner(s) have to protect them from aggressive mineral rights holders?
A key point in Colorado law regarding mineral rights is that the mineral rights take precedence over surface rights. This means that mineral rights owners have a legal right to enter and use the surface of a property that is reasonable and necessary to extract minerals. At the same time, the mineral owner also has a statutory duty to conduct operations in a manner that minimizes damage and intrusion onto the land. Often, these laws apply to oil and gas companies, who usually negotiate leases with mineral rights owners.
This is a good question. I was amused to read when I bought my house that I don’t own the mineral rights to the land. I was idly curious about this at the time and am looking forward to the discussion.
I’m curious if zoning issues would stop someone from mining on a homeowner’s property?
Someone else may own rights to minerals under a property but that property is zoned residential. I assume some mining concern can’t just setup shop in someone’s front yard and start digging.
The mineral rights from my property, which were sold long before I got the place, don’t include any right to disturb the top 300’ without my permission. I checked that before signing the purchase offer. They’d have to drill into the place sideways from someplace where they did have permission to build the setup (which is, for many things, technically possible.)
They’d also need various permits for that setup wherever they did put it, depending on the setup, some of them state and some of them local and maybe some federal.
I suspect that the answer depends both by state and by the particular contract the rights were purchased under.
There was a rural property being auctioned at the annual tax sale, an old field stone house with a minimum bid of 5k. I researched the property, title deeds and abstract. I got very excited about it because below ground there was a natural gas field for storage iirc but it paid dividends to the mineral rights owner. But the owner died and the rights were once again available. Anyway I wasn’t the only one to figure it out as when auction day arrived there were dozens of bids on the property. I forgot what it went for but it far exceeded the minimum bid.
My own property includes the mineral rights but we’re not about to mine sand and gravel from it that’d be prohibited by zoning.
From watching years of Gold Rush there are other permissions needed as well as the simple mineral rights. At least in Alaska and the Yukon. To begin with there are placer mineral rights where the gold is scattered about but available from the surface and hard rock rights where you have to tunnel. You can own one or the other or both.
To actually dig the minerals you may also need a water use license which tells you exactly what you can do with the water. You may not have the right to use river water. You may not have the right to discharge water into a river. You may only be able to use your own ponded water and return it to the ponds. These various water licenses are far harder to get then just the mineral rights.
You may need a land use permit, i.e. you can shovel the surface but cannot dig using power equipment and stockpile the dirt. You will certainly be require to restore the land when you are done.
In California you cannot use any sort of sluice or dredge that has a water pump if you are on a sediment controlled river. My friend owns a couple of nice claims in CA and all he can do is hand panning or scooping loose gravel into a non-powered sluice.
In my state of Ohio you can use a powered dredge up to 3" diameter hose. You can only dredge in the river channel, not in the banks.
In Australia you can own the rights but have to obtain a court filed permit to mine. Until then, you cannot stop someone from digging around your property.
)