They did. I remember when they did. And since NH is very leaning right (pro business) it’s not as strong as other states or it should be. The deciding vote of the supreme courts ruling was David Souter who lived in New Boston NH.
That 1980 federal regulation applies only to public lands, not private. Mineral rights are owned by the private landowner unless those rights are sold which gives the mineral rights buyer to extract them from the property without the landowners permission.
Not in all cases. Many of those mineral rights were sold off long before the current buyer bought the property. It really only applies to rural areas where mining occurred some 150 years ago. I don’t know of anyone giving up their rights. You have to go to the department of deeds to find if the land you’re purchasing owns the mineral rights. It could have been sold over a century ago. If you live in populated town or city then probably don’t have to worry about it. I’ll bet 90% of homeowners don’t know if they own the mineral rights or not.
Other states like Texas and Oklahoma I hear are much worse.
What should a landowner know about mineral rights? | Cronin, Bisson & Zalinsky P.C.
Yes they are, like you said. They may have been sold off decades ago, by a previous landowner, but they are not owned by the state. That’s my point.
Also, when the landowner signs a mineral lease they get something in return. For oil and gas it’s typically a 1/8-1/4 royalty, often called “mailbox money” because you don’t have to do anything, it just shows up. They then might sell the right to that royalty to someone else.
I’m not clear on what makes Oklahoma and Texas “much worse”. My firm once spent months contacting about 600 landowners for a small project in the East Texas oil field. Ownership had gotten very fragmented over the decades.
The landowner doesn’t have to lease the mineral interests, they can develop the minerals on their own. A number of large Texas ranches do that.
Seven Up was originally ‘7up lithiated lemon soda’. There are towns of Lithia Springs in Pennsylvania and Georgia. Lithium was created in the Big Bang.
That’s 100% true. But back to the original point - if the mineral rights were sold on your property, then you won’t be able to stop them from mining on your property.
Farmers in Texas and Oklahoma often face difficult battles against oil rigs because mineral rights are considered the “dominant estate,” allowing operators to use the surface for drilling even without the landowner’s consent. Here in the north east we don’t have oil rigs.
Again. Those mineral rights might have been sold generations ago without the current owner ever realizing it. In Texas, it is common for farmers to discover they do not own the mineral rights to their land, as many were sold decades ago to survive lean years.
Sure. But you said a while back the state gets involved. It doesn’t.
And how is Texas any different than a farm in New England where the mining rights were sold 100 years ago?
We should import what we can to protect our environment and save our resources to use when others are depleted.
It does IF the mineral rights were sold to a person and that person or estate is no longer alive. Unfortunately it does happen here in NH. Especially since people were living in NH over 100 years before Texas was established.
We don’t have a lot of mineral exploration here in NH like Texas - oil being the largest. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t find oil rigs very attractive.
That’s used for shallow deposits. From my understanding the Lithium in the Appalachia mountains is not shallow deposits, but deep deposits that would require extraction much like the way you extract gold or other precious metals. Either way will have some environmental impact - which I even stated in the original post. I have less of an issue with a lithium mine in obscure areas in the White Mountains then seeing oil wells dotting the landscape.
The one example I was able to find for lithium mining in New England was the guy wanting to “quarry” the ore, so surface mining. The lithium wells in Arkansas will largely be hidden by forest an a mile or more apart. Deep mining will have a small impact for the mine opening, but generate lots of processed rock which will have to go somewhere. Huge piles of mine tailings can be seen out west near underground mines.
I agree 100%. It could be an environmental nightmare for the area. There’s very little area in the White Mountains that’s NOT a tourist area. Northern ME is far more remote and would have less of an environmental impact then anyplace in NH. ME is also a much larger state.
The issue is tailings or other mining discard soils/minerals that gets washed into pristine streams and lakes.
This has been a huge issue with PFAS that got spread onto farmland in Maine from biosolids marketed as fertilizer and is now polluting the lands and water.
The cost of these materials will be much higher, to protect the environment I live in, many safe guards will have to be used. Our miners will not be paid pennies on the dollar like in other countries, unless the leaders in this country manage to destroy employee rights and protections.