North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, 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.

And, really, it has been amazing to see the ability of the extraction industry to operate without having to address the legitimate concerns of surface owners.

Now, my bill doesn't change all of that, and, frankly, I would like to go a lot further and will in other legislative efforts. This amendment is really a commonsense effort that is a critical first step to right those wrongs.

It would simply require that the BLM notify a landowner sitting above mineral rights that they plan to put out for bid, award, lease, or sale a drilling permit on that land.

The BLM will argue that there are notification requirements. What that means is it might be posted on a Web site or in the Federal Register. Well, I guarantee you that Mr. or Mrs. Smith in a suburban subdevelopment are not eagerly checking the Federal Register every day. They are not even generally aware that there are mineral rights under their property, nor should they have to be. They should simply get a letter in the mail saying what is happening if and when there is going to be mineral development on their property.

And I think that is a simple, commonsense step that would protect American taxpayers from undue, unreasonable burdens placed upon them and protect property rights. I really hope it is not controversial and that we can adopt this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I wish that this amendment weren't necessary. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of homeowners in Colorado who fail to be notified by the BLM.

Now, there is a good faith effort requirement, but there is no system in place to ensure that the person gets a notification. So, in effect, what happens is the agency will sign off, ``We made a good faith effort, couldn't find who the property owner was,'' and it is posted in the Federal Register or in a newspaper in an ad that the homeowner is extremely unlikely to ever see.

What we are simply saying is have a step to implement this directive that already exists. Give this meaning; give this teeth. Make sure that homeowners are actually notified in the mail, that there is an effort to actually find out who they are, and not just a bureaucratic signoff that we don't know who they are and, therefore, they are never going to find out until trucks drive onto their property.

It is a real problem, and there is a real simple, commonsense solution. I urge my colleagues to adopt it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I respect my good friend and colleague from Colorado.

Part of the goal of this amendment is to ensure that the full area of disruption receives notification. So where you have a suburban subdevelopment, it is one thing for the owner under which the activity is occurring to get notice.

But keep in mind the activity also has an impact certainly within a mile radius of that activity in terms of loud noises, trucks, et cetera. Families may choose to leave town; others may choose to stick it out and make sure they are prepared for whatever activity will occur, when it occurs.

But, clearly, if there are notification aspects in the current law, which there are, they are insufficient, because I come before you telling you that there are homeowners in Colorado who have no prior word of extraction activity on their land until, literally, they see it occurring. They see trucks, they see people. They go out, they say, ``What are you doing?'' and they say, ``We are getting ready to drill.''

This happens in my State. This amendment would make sure that, more than a good faith effort that is simply signed off on by some bureaucrat and therefore waived, there is a real effort of implementation. We give full rulemaking authority to the BLM to actually come up with a system for notifying homeowners and adjacent property owners about extraction work that is occurring for the mineral rights that occur under where they live.

I hope that this is a basis of common sense from which we can build a concept of homeowner protections and surface owner rights to balance the rights that the mineral owners have. Certainly, transparency and notification is a simple one and an easy one for the BLM to implement. That is all the amendment would do.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

I yield back the balance of my time.

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