I know the definitive answer would depend upon location, but just generally speaking what is the legality/regulation of digging a tunnel under others people property.
For the sake of the scenario, and to explain what I’m talking about, let’s assume we’re talking a very wealthy ‘doomsday prepper’, who has built an underground shelter under his own property in an urban location. But decides that he needs more space or a backup shelter outside the urban area, but doesn’t want to turn the risk of having to travel ‘in the open’ to get to this back up, so decides to create a tunnel, lets say 2 kms long to another location, and does not own the property between the two locations.
Is there any way for him to do this being all ‘above board’, with permits and everything. Would it be a case of negotiating with each property owner that he tunnels under, or does the government have ownership of ‘underground rights’ on all property?
I gotta believe that since the other people own the ground under their property theoretically to the center of the earth that you cannot do what you are proposing.
It’s my understanding that property owners have surface rights but not mineral rights. So the “prepper” could conceivably secure mineral rights of the various properties and dig away.
He’s gotta negotiate with each property owner. A property owner owns from the center of the earth to the heavens: Cujus est solum ejus est usque ad coelum. The heavens part is now subject to overflights above 2000 feet in the US, but the subsurface rights are still yours unless you’ve negotiated them away.
Mineral rights are not relevant to a shallow subsurface tunnel from which no minerals are being accessed or removed.
a) You understand wrong. Mineral rights may be severed but that is not automatic.
b) Even if digging a tunnel fell under mineral rights (it doesn’t) and they were all severed, all that means is a different group of owners to negotiate with.
The standard type of land ownership in the U.S. and other common law realms is “in fee simple absolute”: unless encumbered by deed or by law, land owners have absolute rights over their land. There are many laws circumscribing these rights in modern codes: laws securing public interests in navigable airways, waterways, and the like prevent many activities; most communities have zoning laws that prevent certain activities in certain areas, to prevent nuisances; governments hold the power of eminent domain. However, none of these allow neighbors to violate the basic freehold rights of the landowner. Yes, many properties have had their mineral rights severed from the surface rights, but this has to be specified in the land grant or elsewhere in the chain of title – though such severance is more common than not in some places (California, I think), I do not think it is the law anywhere that mineral rights are automatically severed from freehold rights. In the absence of such severance, or some other law granting it, no one has the right to dig on or under another’s land without securing an easement from the owner.
Say you are a property owner and you want to tunnel (surreptitiously?) under your neighbor’s property. As discussed in various posts above, there can be various questions about who owns exactly which rights to do what, under your neighbor’s property. But in all cases, it’s almost certainly not you.
In any modern city, property owners almost certainly never own mineral rights under their land. That would include rights to water (which is typically classified as a mineral, if I’m not mistaken). But water flows around underground, and that aquifer under your land is the same aquifer that’s under everyone else’s house. You can’t just drill your own well into that and help yourself to all you want.
There are also underground utilities – fresh water, sewer, gas, and in modern cities, electricity, phone, and cable are also underground. The mains tend to go under the streets, with lines off those to the homes. Try digging underground across property lines, and you have a good chance of running into something. So underground rights must be restricted to prevent that from happening.
Furthermore, utilities often have other underground facilities as well, under private properties, and they have easements for those. Case in point: A friend of mine has an exotic tree on his front lawn, and suddenly the power company says it has to go because the roots are (or might be) impinging on an underground transformer vault that’s right there. My friend, and the power company, and the city are all battling with one another over that, last I heard. So if you try tunneling, you may also be running into easements like that.
I often wondered about a related topic. In my home city of Dublin, it is common for shop basements to extend out under the street, beyond the above-ground street frontage of the shop.
On those occasions when I noticed that I was under the street, it occurred to me to wonder; what are the limits? Can each shop extend as far as the centre-line of the street? If a store had premises on both sides of a narrow street, could they link the basements together? How would you manage conflicts with buried utilities?
Here in Japan the situation is more extreme, with very extensive underground shopping malls and pedestrian streets linking subway stations with the basements of department stores and so on. I have no idea how property rights work in these situations.
Most of those giant shopping malls, like underground transit tunnels, etc. are organized by the city (in cahoots with the developer(s) and the transit authority). The city has “eminent domain” to expropriate land or allow themselves to tunnel under it, and only compensate at fair market value.
As a private person without an infinite bankroll, you’d be stuck. Plus, any deal allowing tunneling under the street (when you reach the end of the block) would have to be approved by the city, and go through council debate, etc. Any structure on your land (buried or otherwise) likely need a permit. Making an exit in the basement likely qualifies as modifying the strutural integrity enough to reuire a building permit. Why would I permit you to tunnel under my property, what does it do to my property value?
(Then there’s the logistics. How are you going to remove dumptruck loads of crud for every tem feet or so you travel? One bucket at a time, a 2km tunnel may be finished in your lifetime. You’d start at the far end outside the city, I assume, or the neighbours would complain about the traffic… Crossing jurisdictional boundaries is even more red tape. You need soil analysis and engineer reports to show the tunnel is structurally sound, etc. Not just “get a pick and some wood supports and start building”.))
IIRC, the tunnels in the German stalags were typically about 30 feet underground so they would not be detected, but often microphones in the ground still picked up the sounds. Ditto for tunnels into Egypt from Gaza or under the border from Mexico to southern California. 50 feet or so down seems to be typical.
This is why the basic “Dr. Evil” or “Dr. No” massive underground lair stuff is so fanciful; does any script writer have any idea how big a project even a moderate sized building is? How would you hide a giant underground construction requiring boatloads of cement and structural steel, etc.? Nobody notices a major contruction site?
Indeed, all us self-respecting supervillains either bought our lairs ready-made from the government or had them sneakily incorporated into the foundations of a modest estate project such as a mall, condo, office complex etc.
The main reason for building the Three Gorges dam was so the Illuminati could build a new clubhouse underneath, and now the silly fools have damp dripping down the walls in their underground spaceship hangar!
I saw a news item a few years ago about some crazy fellow in the UK that over many years expanded his basement by tunneling all over the neighbourhood. The authorities were not amused. I cannot remember how he dealt with all the waste material.
My Google-Fu is weak and I can not find the story.
He died in 2010, but his house was just sold for £1.1million. It took 33 tonnes of concrete to fill in his excavations. It cost the local council something like £500k to put right the damage he caused to the surrounding land.
As for the spoil (44tonnes of it), he just dumped that on site… It had to be carted off by the council too.
Funny thing is, he only intended to dig a wine cellar but ended up digging all the way down to the water table, and way out beyond his boundaries. He dug for 40 years, and apparently discovered various hidden tube lines and dug under the local canal, which is pretty ballsy IMO.
He’s my hero…when I’m old, I want to be THAT eccentric.
No, no, the way to do it is to tunnel down–straight down–to the center of the earth (cannot be owned by anyone) and then back up–straight up–to the second property.
In the crowded cities of the past, it was financially feasible to extend storage or even shop space under the sidewalks or portions of the street. Typically, the space is leased (or occupied under license or concession) from the municipality. It is possible that there are a few places in the world where the street simply runs as an easement across the land of others, and those others are free to build over or under the street, but that would be an unusual situation in almost any modern land ownership system.
Sorry, don’t have a cite. It’s the sort of thing that I just thought I always knew. Specifically referring to underground water rights: I believe that’s included in mineral rights, and private land owners (certainly in municipal areas at least) would never own those rights privately, since underground water tends to be one big aquifer under many properties. So water is necessarily a “socialized” “mineral” resource. I think.
It might well be different in rural areas, where people might typically have wells on their own properties.