EDIT: It’s Aroostook County, ME. I haven’t bought the house yet, mainly because of this nonsense.

  • bluGill@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    What rights do they have. There is a big difference between they have (or plan to have) a tunnel under your house if the vein of whatever they are mining happens to go that way, and they have rights to knock down your house. Different states have different rules.

    Oil is a liquid so if they have a well on your neighbor’s land they are taking “your” oil so it makes sense to make them buy out the entire neighborhood - but they are don’t need to access your surface, the pump elsewhere is enough. Similar for underground mines, they follow the vein of mineral wherever, and don’t care what you do on the surface.

    However there are other cases where their pit mine gets bigger and they need to take your land and your can do nothing about it since they have those rights they give you notice and a check (they probably have to buy your house, but maybe not!) and you have to leave in a few months.

    In between they can put a well or ventilation shaft in your backyard, but other than having to look at it forever, and the time when they build it there isn’t much loss of your yard (some loss, but not much).

    The good news, in places where this is done all the time the courts and law have worked out all the details. The contracts tend to be 1 page that just refers to the hundreds of pages of legal documents saying how things are done. (by contrast if you lease land for a wind turbine it will be hundreds of pages - the legal details are not known so they have to cover all the details) You can go to a local cafe and ask a stranger and probably get reasonably good advice since everyone will know what really happens based on what happened to someone else. Or half an hour with a lawyer and get real information.

    The bad news, different states have different rules. Sometimes cities or counties also have rules. As such there is no way anyone can say anything without knowing exactly where you live.