Field of law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Split estates and surface owner rights, location and maintenance of claims, leasing and royalties, permitting and reclamation bonds, mine safety enforcement, and abandoned workings.

Surface Mining Permits and the Reclamation Bond

Surface coal mining requires a permit from the state regulatory authority under an approved program, or from the federal office where none exists. The application carries ownership disclosures, hydrologic analysis and a reclamation plan the regulator must find achievable. A performance bond is set at the cost for a third party to complete that plan, and it is released in phases as backfilling, revegetation and the liability period are successively completed.

6 min readFederal and state

Mining & Mineral Rights

Locating an Unpatented Mining Claim on Federal Land

A mining claim is created by discovering a valuable mineral deposit on land open to location, marking the boundaries so they can be readily traced, and recording the notice of location both under state law and with the Bureau of Land Management. No agency approves the location. The claim conveys a possessory right to the minerals and to surface use reasonably incident to mining, and it remains valid only while the discovery holds.

6 min readFederal law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Abandoned Mine Liability and the Good Samaritan Problem

Liability for an abandoned mine runs to owners and operators under the environmental cleanup statute and to anyone discharging pollutants under the water statute, without regard to who caused the contamination. A volunteer who improves conditions short of meeting water quality standards can become the responsible party for what remains. The federal reclamation fund, financed by a fee on coal production, pays for official work but reaches coal sites first.

6 min readFederal law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Annual Maintenance and How a Claim Is Forfeited

Every unpatented mining claim, mill site and tunnel site carries an annual maintenance fee payable before the assessment year begins. A claimant holding no more than ten locations nationwide may instead certify a waiver and perform assessment work. Failure to pay or to file is treated by statute as a conclusive forfeiture, requires no agency action or notice, and cannot be cured; the ground reopens to location by anyone.

6 min readFederal law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Mill Sites and Tunnel Sites Beside a Mining Claim

A mill site is a parcel of nonmineral public land, not exceeding five acres, held for mining or milling use rather than on a discovery. A tunnel site secures the veins cut by a tunnel driven to develop a lode, for a stated distance from the face, and is lost by six months of inactivity. Both are recorded like claims and both carry the annual maintenance fee.

7 min readState law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Leasable, Locatable and Salable Minerals

Federal minerals fall into three acquisition regimes. Locatable minerals are claimed under the General Mining Law by discovery and location. Leasable minerals, chiefly the fuels and certain chemical minerals, are leased under the Mineral Leasing Act for bonus, rent and royalty. Salable mineral materials such as sand, stone and gravel are sold at appraised value under the Materials Act. The classification decides who may hold the deposit and what the United States is paid for it.

6 min readFederal law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Dormant Mineral Acts and Reuniting a Severed Estate

Dormant mineral statutes extinguish a severed mineral interest that has gone unused for a defined period, vesting it in the surface owner unless a savings event occurred. Savings events typically include production, a recorded conveyance or lease, payment of taxes, or a filed statement of claim. The Supreme Court in Texaco, Inc. v. Short upheld such a statute, holding that the enactment itself supplies the notice due process requires.

6 min readState law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Mine Safety Citations and How They Are Contested

The Mine Act requires regular unannounced inspections of every mine, four times a year underground and twice at surface operations. An inspector who finds a violation issues a citation fixing a time for abatement, and may escalate to a withdrawal order for failure to abate, for unwarrantable failure, or for imminent danger. Operators contest the enforcement action or the proposed penalty within thirty days, before an independent commission rather than the enforcing agency.

6 min readFederal law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Sand, Gravel and the Common Variety Problem

The Common Varieties Act provides that deposits of common varieties of sand, stone, gravel, pumice, pumicite and cinders are not valuable mineral deposits under the mining laws, and directs them instead to disposal by sale. A deposit escapes the exclusion only if it has a property giving it distinct and special value, a test the Interior Board and the courts apply through a structured comparison with ordinary deposits of the same material.

6 min readFederal law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Federal Coal Leasing and Logical Mining Units

Federal coal is leased competitively, ordinarily on a tract configured after an application and a fair market value determination, and only where the land use plan has found the area acceptable for leasing. A lease runs an initial term and continues so long as coal is produced in commercial quantities. Diligent development requires production within the statutory period, and a logical mining unit lets scattered leases be treated as one operation for that purpose.

6 min readState law

Mining & Mineral Rights

Water Rights for a Mine and the Problem of Dewatering

In the western states a mine holds water under an appropriative right defined by priority, quantity and beneficial use, obtained by permit from the state water agency. Removing groundwater to keep workings dry is itself a use of water in most of those states and requires its own authorization. Drawdown that reaches senior wells, springs and streams creates liability under state law, and the water removed cannot be discharged or reinjected without federal and state permits.

6 min readState law

Fields of law

This journal

Mining & Mineral Rights

Surface Mining Permits and the Reclamation Bond

Locating an Unpatented Mining Claim on Federal Land

Abandoned Mine Liability and the Good Samaritan Problem

Annual Maintenance and How a Claim Is Forfeited

Mill Sites and Tunnel Sites Beside a Mining Claim

Leasable, Locatable and Salable Minerals

Dormant Mineral Acts and Reuniting a Severed Estate

Mine Safety Citations and How They Are Contested

Sand, Gravel and the Common Variety Problem

Federal Coal Leasing and Logical Mining Units

Water Rights for a Mine and the Problem of Dewatering