From: tilley@fsg.UUCP (Tom Tilley)
Subject: Re: National parks to be opened to strip mining
Reply-To: tilley@sunfse.ese.lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: LMSC, Sunnyvale
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 19:58:50 GMT


In article <1992Oct1.164946.5350@tc.fluke.COM> witters@tc.fluke.COM (John Witters) writes:
>In article <1992Sep29.195915.29617@news.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>>
>>It seems clear to me that a fair approach to real-estate law would require
>>strip miners to buy the land they intend to mine lock stock and barrel, then
>>resell it (typically at a substantial loss) after they've done their best to
>>restore it after stripping the coal (or gold, or copper, or whatever).
>>
>>With the law framed that way, I'd bet that strip mining would be far less
>>popular, and I'd bet that the miners would take far more care to fix up the
>>mess they make before they leave.
>
>And what if the mining company goes bankrupt before they restore the land?
>Guess who has to pick up the tab for restoration then?  I can think of several
>examples where something like this has happened:

[ Three examples deleted. ]

Also remember that, to the extent we are talking about wilderness, land
restoration is not wilderness creation (re-creation).  There may be wilderness
there in 100, 200, + years, but we will not live to see it.

I have to agree that it is unfair that the law permits the owner of a
mining right to destroy a surface land use right owned by someone else.
The separation of mining rights from surface rights results in conflicting
"rights", which our laws appear to resolve in favor of the miner to the
detriment of the land owner (in this case the US government: it could be
any private individual).  Note that we aren't simply talking about the
common law concept of access: the common law access 1) implies that the
access is already in common use, and 2) implies that access should not
injure the property owner who must grant access.  Strip mining on someone
else's land cannot be regarded as anything but injury to the land owner
(in this case, us) regardless of whether restoration eventually happens.

> ...  About all we can do is make our views
>known, and hope that our representatives are more interested in counting votes
>than dollars.

Any proposed regulation has a public comment period.  With respect to this,
I have the following questions:

    1) Can anyone file a public comment?
    2) How can we get copies of the text of the proposed regulation, as well
       as copies of its justification?
    3) What is the process for filing a public comment?
    4) Would it help for all of us who are concerned to file such a comment?
    5) What is the public comment filing deadline?

Not long before I read of this proposed regulation in the local newspaper,
I read that one of the reasons the proposed wetlands re-definition died was
that there were 70,000 public comments (a record) which were mostly negative.


Tom.
#--------------------------------------------------#
| Tom Tilley                                       |
| Internet : tilley@sunfse.ese.lmsc.lockheed.com   |
Newsgroups: rec.backcountry