Political Quotes

“I want to explain how in many States, including my home State of Colorado, landowners--if you live in a home, you own your property, you bought it--you are not necessarily and in most cases, in fact, you are not also the owner of the minerals beneath your land. That is called a split estate. Many, in fact most, surface estates in my State were split from their subsurface or mineral rights--severed. And Congress rewrote the rules of the Homestead Act to maintain ownership over minerals even as they gave away western lands for development. So, again, what that means is we have suburban subdevelopments, people's homes--people live in their homes--and the Federal Government owns the mineral rights under those homes. Along with that comes the right to extract those minerals. Unfortunately, what fails to be present in the Homestead Act is protections and notification requirements for the people who live there, the homeowners. So, in some cases, in Colorado and elsewhere, landholders and homeowners don't even know that there has been a lease or a drill permit on their land where they own the surface rights. Literally, one day an oil company can drive up to the property and construct a horizontal drill in the middle of your backyard without notification. So you can imagine the result--harm and loss of cattle or crops, infrastructure on the property--not knowing what is occurring.…”