thegreekdog wrote: PLAYER57832 wrote:thegreekdog wrote:I still don't understand what the concern is. The land was owned by private individuals. The government purchased the land, but not the mineral rights, reserving those to the original owners. The original owners could get the minerals so long as they didn't overly disturb the land.
Neither is this a Republican/Democrat thing either considering this has been around since 1981. I mean we've had three going on four Democratic administrations. You people are whackjobs sometimes (e.g. Player and oVo in this thread).
Accessing the minerals in this instance is so intrusive it prohibits surface uses for which the land was purchased.
Furthermore, Deep Hydraulic Fracking only started in the past few years... and uh, care to guess who was president in 1981? Per the "Democratic" bit, it sounds like you are trying to buy into this "you are either Republican or a Democrat" garbage. That is true in voting for the president and higher level offices, but not much beyond that.
Okay...
(1) There appear to be specific requirements that must be met in order for the private owner to access the minerals. If the private owner can't meet those requirements, tough shit for the private owner
Nope, that WAS the case, though not really, because the demands were actually reasonable, not prohibitive, now its "tough sh*t" for the public.
its like they are claiming that the only way to get their minerals is to strip mine and so too bad if the forest is lost in the mean time... and that is not a huge exaggeration.
thegreekdog wrote: (2) Did you read the thing you posted? The reference to 1981 was a reference to a court decision, not a presidential decree. Therefore, no presidential influence there. Further, cases tend to take a while to get decided; therefore, it is likely that whatever happened in the 1981 case happened well before Ronald Reagan was president. I would look for more details but since you can't be bothered to read the thing you posted, why should I put any more effort in?
It’s a tangled mess.
The 1981 ruling had largely to do with people who were actually homesteading on “mining claims”, particularly in northern California, but also elsewhere. The Allegheny Forest has been drilled almost since its inception, in a couple of cases maybe before (records are not clear on that, but oil and gas drilling began in the general area well before 1911). There are multiple high power gas lines running through the forest, other issues. None of them are managed without controversy, but the forest has largely “grown up” despite that. One reason a lot of activity was far less controversial here is because almost this entire forest is second growth (honestly, the small “old growth” patches are more of an eastern joke than anything biologically real). Given that the area looked a lot like a moonscape, people were more happy to see trees and wildlife return than upset that a few patches were interrupted by drill rigs. BUT, and this is very important, most of them were also largely hidden, small in size. Really, there was more impact from the clearing necessary for the high power lines running through the forest than for the drilling rigs, as far as most people were concerned.
There is just no comparison between those impacts and the impacts of the new frackers. Furthermore, each and every attempt local individuals AND now the US forest service are making to regulate these operations for pure safety and environmental concerns are being thwarted.
), it does sound like a case of abuse of power. So, you are not arguing against me at any rate, unless the above is a distortion of what really happened.
