PDF: House Bill 2837 WHAT’S NEXTHouse Bill 2837 is scheduled to be heard Tuesday in the full House and Conservation Committee.
NASHVILLE — State Rep. Richard Floyd hopes to strike pay dirt this week with legislation aimed at settling disputes that have pitted homeowners and other surface-property owners against holders of mineral rights eager to take valuable mountain stone from the property.
House Bill 2837 states that if mineral-rights owners do not have a written agreement with the surface-property owner, they must then obtain a surface-mining permit. Those are tougher regulations that would require would-be miners to post a bond and guarantee the property would be appropriately reclaimed.
“The language of the bill protects the surface owner and the mineral-rights owner,” said Rep. Floyd, R-Chattanooga. “If somebody comes to exercise their mineral rights, then they have to reclaim the property. If they don’t want to go through the state permitting process … all they got to do is get a contract with the surface owner.”
Businesses engaging in mining or “harvesting” the stone fret over the impact.
“Our concerns are for the property owners and for the mineral-rights owners who have purchased the rights to specific minerals,” said Jim Botbyl of Crossville-based Silvara Stone, who is secretary of the Tennessee Natural Building Stone Conservancy, a trade and lobbying organization.
Mr. Botbyl said “the current permit process is extensive, and we just don’t see a need to make it more extensive. I think there are other ways that we can all get the same thing accomplished and it would be a lot clearer on a complex law.”
Rep. Floyd represents Signal, Montlake, Flat Top, Mowbray and other mountains that are part of Walden’s Ridge. On a number of properties there, mineral rights for coal or timber rights long ago were separated from surface rights.
But with increased residential development, that is resulting in increasing collisions between a new breed of surface-property owners with mineral-rights owners, who see money to be made in the mining of mountain stone, used in building and decorative purposes such as walls, fireplaces and patios.
The result has been both lawsuits and legislation. Rep. Floyd’s bill, versions of which have been introduced over the past three years, is scheduled to come up Tuesday in the House Conservation and Environment Committee.
Currently, rock miners come under water quality permitting guidelines that require mined areas be stabilized so they do not erode and impact water quality, said Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation spokeswoman Tisha Calabrese-Benton.
Mr. Botbyl and rock miners say that when done right by experienced companies, current law is adequate to the task. They argue Rep. Floyd’s proposal would financially harm their businesses by subjecting them to surface mining laws.
“It’s a very extensive permit (process) that most people can’t afford to do,” Mr. Botbyle argued. “Some permits take up to five years to get. So figure at $80 engineering fees times two or three people over five years, it can be very expensive.”
He said companies such as his are not to blame for the disputes that keep erupting.
“We have to figure out how to get the whole industry regulated instead of putting more regulation on the people who are doing it right,” Mr. Botbyl said. “Some people just don’t know better.”
Rep. Floyd counters that “rock harvesters have been operating with impunity for years.”
He recently told the Environment Subcommittee that rock miners “have been able to dig a hole to the city limits of hell” on someone else’s property. And they don’t have to pay the same level of property taxes paid by surface rights owners let alone severance taxes paid by other mining operations.
“Rock harvesters” may be unhappy with his bill, Rep. Floyd said in a later interview, “but I didn’t bring this focus. I didn’t tear up a bunch of people’s property and leave it.”
Rep. Floyd’s bill was mired in subcommittee for weeks as lawmakers wrestled not only with his proposal but broader questions about conflicting property rights and whether rocks are minerals as rock miners contend.
“The bigger problem is the definition of minerals,” said Conservation and Environment Committee Chairman Joe McCord, R-Maryville.
He also noted there have been different court rulings on rock mining in Southeast Tennessee cases. Lawmakers, if they are able, should provide more clarity on the law, he said.
Just last week in a Sequatchie County case, Hamilton County Chancellor Howell Peoples made it harder for rock miners to destroy property when stripping out stone from others’ property.
“The mineral owner does not have the right … to extract substances in a manner that would cause serious, long-term interference with the uses of the surface” reasonable landowners expect, the chancellor held.
Lawmakers last year passed a bill that gave state property the same types of protections Rep. Floyd is now seeking for private owners of surface rights.