ownership while reserving to the United States at least some part of the mineral rights underlying those lands. In 1909 the first such act was passed in which only coal was reserved. The minerals reserved were expanded in several similar acts passed during the next several years. Perhaps best known is the Stockraising Homestead Act of 1916 under which all homestead patents issued contained a reservation of "all the coal and other minerals. . . together with the right to prospect for, mine, and remove the same."

These actions were prompted by the growing dissatisfaction with the existing mining policies especially the concern about the inability to manage mineral resources so as to assure their conservation and the fear that these resources were being monopolized. They marked the first step in placing most of the energy and fertilizer minerals under a leasing system.

LEASING

The leasing system was originally instituted for potash in 1917 as a wartime measure because of the importance of potash in the manufacture of explosives. The general leasing scheme in effect today was established by the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920. This system removed specific categories of minerals from location under the 1872 Mining Law and subjected their development to more extensive Federal regulation and control. The minerals covered in the original 1920 Act were coal, phosphate, sodium, oil, oil shale, and gas. The leasing system was extended to sulfur in Louisiana in 1926, to potassium in 1927, to sulfur in New Mexico in 1932, and to native asphalt, solid and semisolid bitumen, and bituminous rock (including oil-impregnated rock or sands from which oil is recoverable only by special treatment after the deposit is mined or quarried) in 1960.

Because the 1920 Act has been amended substantially and because the leasing system was extended piecemeal to additional minerals there is little uniformity in the approaches taken. Therefore, a detailed discussion of the leasing system will be postponed until later sections. Generally, however, the approach is to issue prospecting permits giving the holder the exclusive right to search for the specified leasable mineral within the described area. If the permittee discovers a commercially viable or workable deposit of the leasable mineral on the described lands within the time period allotted he is entitled to a preference-right lease to develop and produce the specified mineral from that deposit. Such preference-right leases are issued on a noncompetitive basis. Rental payments are required under both permits and leases and royalties must be paid on any production obtained.

According to Russell Wayland of the U.S. Geological Survey, the considerations in the passage of the 1920 Leasing Act were to:

*** prevent the establishment of monopolies, insure competition, provide for continuous working of deposits under lease, discourage the holding of lands for speculative purposes, protect the prospector's investments made prior to actual discovery of a valuable mineral deposit, insure enough acreage and mineral resources to justify plant investment, and provide for proper operation and prevention of waste. Of these, the legislative history shows that the major reasons leading to enactment of the mineral leasing laws involved the desire to prevent development of monopolies, to discourage holding without development for speculative purposes, and to provide for continuous working of the deposits. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 thus established a second general system of access to minerals on the Federal lands under which the

government retains ultimate ownership of the mineral lands with the discretionary power to permit prospecting for and development of these minerals under specified conditions in return for payment of certain fees.

MINERAL ACCESS ON ACQUIRED LANDS

The 1872 Mining Law and the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act apply, in general, to public domain lands1 and not to acquired lands.2 This problem was remedied in part by the Mineral Leasing Act for Acquired Lands which was passed in 1947. In effect it extended the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act to acquired lands. Although the Departments of Agriculture and Interior recommended that the bill apply to all minerals on acquired lands, Congress restricted it to the minerals subject to the 1920 act as amended.

The previous year Congress had approved Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1946 by which jurisdiction over mineral deposits on certain acquired lands managed by the Department of Agriculture was transferred to the Department of the Interior. The lands involved are, for the most part, located in the eastern and southern United States and were acquired under the Weeks Act, in connection with the rural rehabilitation program, and as a part of the effort to retire submarginal lands.

Leasing on these lands under the 1946 Reorganization Act extends to minerals other than those covered by the Mineral Leasing Act for Acquired Lands. This represents the only significant provision for leasing of minerals ordinarily locatable under the 1872 Mining Law.

DISPOSITION OF COMMON VARIETY MINERALS

A third system of access to minerals was established by the Material Disposal Act of 1947 and the Common Varieties Act of 1955. The 1947 Act authorized the Secretary of the Interior to dispose of sand, stone, gravel, common clay, and timber and other vegetative products on public lands of the United States if the disposal of such materials (1) was not otherwise expressly authorized by law, including the United States mining laws, (2) was not expressly prohibited by laws of the United States, and (3) would not be detrimental to the public interest. The 1955 Act, as amended, removed common varieties of sand, stone, gravel, pumice, pumicite, cinders and deposits of petrified wood from location under the mining laws and made them subject to disposition under the Materials Disposal Act. It also gave to the Secretary of Agriculture the same authority with respect to mineral and vegetative materials located on lands under his jurisdiction as that possessed by the Secretary of the Interior.

OFFSHORE MINERAL ACCESS

The 1920 Leasing Act for oil and gas did not extend to offshore lands. States such as Texas, Louisiana, and California which had established leasing systems for their offshore areas began leasing these

1 Lands of the U.S. acquired by cession and otherwise politically and which have never been disposed of, or have been disposed of with a reservation of the minerals to the U.S. 2 Those which have been in private ownership and have been acquired by an agency of the U.S. from a private owner.

lands during the early 1940's. A jurisdictional dispute soon arose between the coastal states and the Federal Government concerning leasing authority in these areas, particularly in the so-called tidelands (lands underlying the oceans and Gulf of Mexico seaward of the lowwater mark). This issue was resolved by the Supreme Court in 1947, in the case of United States v. California, by holding that the United States possessed paramount rights to such lands. As a result of the heated controversy which followed this discussion Congress passed the Submerged Lands Act in 1953. This act relinquished to the coastal states all authority within the state boundaries as they existed when the state joined the Union with the proviso that such boundaries may not extend seaward from the coast more than 3 marine leagues (9 nautical miles or about 1012 statute miles). In the 1960 case of United States v. Louisiana the Supreme Court established the historical boundaries of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to be 3 miles from the coast and the historical boundaries of Texas and Florida to be 3 marine leagues into the Gulf of Mexico.

Also in 1953 the Congress passed the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act which establishes the jurisdiction of the Federal government over submerged lands extending outward from the seaward state boundaries and directs the Secretary of the Interior to administer a mineral leasing program for these Outer Continental Shelf lands. Although leasing is authorized for all minerals, to date it has been restricted to sulfur and oil and gas. In the 1975 case of United States v. Maine the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Government has sovereign rights to the submerged lands lying more than 3 geographical miles from the coast of the 13 states bordering the Atlantic Ocean. This decision clears the way for the extension of the OCS leasing program to this area.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN PUBLIC LAND MINERAL POLICY

The location and leasing system existed with remarkably little conflict until the uranium boom following World War II. This was due to the fortuitous geological fact that locatable and leasable minerals do not generally occur in the same environment. Since 1924 the Department of the Interior had taken the position that lands subject to a prospecting permit or lease for a leasable mineral or known to be valuable for leasable minerals could not be entered under the mining location laws. Exploration for uranium, a locatable mineral, created a serious conflict with this position because many uranium ores are found in sedimentary beds which may also be source beds for oil and gas. As a result, when large-scale uranium exploration began in the early 1950's large areas of Federal land were subject to oil and gas leases or lease applications and were thus not open to location for uranium.

This problem was settled in 1954, by the Multiple Mineral Development Act, also known as Public Law 585. Not only did this act provide a procedure for the validation of mining claims previously made on lands withdrawn from mineral entry by the 1920 Leasing Act but it also attempted to reconcile prospectively the existence of the two different systems. Mining claims could thereafter be located on lands previously considered segregated by operation of the Leasing Act.

However, all leasable minerals are reserved to the United States if at the time of patent the claimed lands are covered by a Leasing Act lease or prospecting permit, or application therefore, or are known to be valuable for leaseable minerals.

One final piece of legislation deserves mention in this survey-the Surface Resources Act of July 23, 1955. This act provides that the rights of any mining claimant to locations made subsequent to the passage of the act are, prior to the issuance of a patent, subject to the right of the United States to manage and dispose of the vegetative surface resources. Moreover, the mining claimant, prior to patent, may not sever, remove, or use any vegetative or other surface resources on the claim except to the extent necessary for prospecting, mining, or processing operations and uses incident thereto, or for the construction of buildings or structures to use for such operations, or to provide clearance for such operations. This legislation was enacted to allow for multiple-use management of the public lands which, though claimed, have not been taken to patent for whatever reason. It also removed the so called "common varieties" of sand, stone, gravel, pumice, pumicite, or cinders and deposits of petrified wood from operation of the mining laws.