Opinion ID: 311492
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Free Use Gravel Permits.

Text: 189 Appellants charge that, since the ultimate purpose of the road and airports is to facilitate construction of the pipeline, the use is for commercial or industrial purposes within the meaning of 30 U.S.C. Sec. 601 (1970), and therefore excepted from the free use exemption. As indicated earlier, however, both the declared and the real State intention with respect to the road and airports is to construct public facilities, and the fact that such facilities will incidentally, or even primarily, initially benefit private industrial or commercial activities does not detract from the public, noncommercial, nature of the facilities themselves. It seems reasonable to assume that in enacting the exception to the free use exemption Congress intended to exact a price from the state only when the state itself was using the gravel in some profit-making enterprise. There being no indication that this is the case here, we hold the free use permits valid.