Land records show may state parks could see mining, drilling

By RANDY LUDLOW

The Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

About 40 percent of Ohio’s natural treasures — its state parks, forests and wildlife and nature preserves — could be undermined in the quest to remove valuable coal, oil, natural gas and other minerals.

Mineral rights owned by other parties could permit mining or drilling in parts of 18 state forests, 24 state parks and 53 natural areas, according to an analysis of state land records by The Dispatch.

Even the parcel holding one of the crown jewels of Ohio’s park system — Old Man’s Cave in Hocking Hills State Park southeast of Columbus — potentially could be drilled for oil and natural gas.

All told, parcels containing more than 117,000 acres, about 20 percent of the park and forest land owned by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, could be mined and drilled.

Environmentalists say the prospect of mining grew more ominous last month when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that mineral rights underlying park lands include the right to strip mine coal unless expressly forbidden in deeds.

ODNR reports it has not received “any new or renewed interest” in mining on state properties in the wake of the court ruling.

And, numbers suggest a flurry of coal mining in state parks is unlikely amid an industry downturn. Many of the ODNR properties involving mineral-rights are in Ohio’s coal country.

The state has 55 surface coal mines — half the number of 14 years ago — and 10 underground mines across 17 counties in eastern and southeastern Ohio. The underground operations produce 73 percent of the coal mined in Ohio, which ranks 10th among the states in coal production.

The state’s production peaked around 1970 and has dropped to half the amount of 40 years ago. Coal prices most recently peaked in 2008 and also since have dropped by about half.

Demand for lower-priced “dirty” coal, however, such as Ohio’s predominate high-sulfur type, is growing as increasing numbers of power plants are equipped with scrubbers that can capture sulfur-dioxide emissions, coal analysts write.

State officials decline to discuss the impact of the court’s ruling in detail, saying ODNR holds about 4,500 deeds and that it would be “costly and time consuming” to analyze all the land records, which could be up to 200 years old.

Deeds will be reviewed as mineral-rights claims are made to determine whether natural areas could be vulnerable to surface mining that carves huge pits in the earth, the agency said.

Natural-resources officials warned that the land data provided to The Dispatch is neither complete nor conclusive about mineral rights. The data did not indicate whether rights involve coal or other resources or which parks currently are being harvested.

When the state bought or was given land in decades past, some sellers retained the mineral rights to extract coal, oil and natural gas underlying the land. The fact that owners held on to the mineral rights allowed the state to buy land at deep discounts, officials said.

In the Ohio Supreme Court case, ODNR unsuccessfully argued that strip mining would “utterly destroy” its lands, saying only underground mining was allowed unless strip mining was specifically authorized in mineral-rights deeds.

The ruling allows mineral-rights owners to strip mine about 65 acres for coal valued at $11 million in the Brush Creek Wildlife Areas in Jefferson County in eastern Ohio. The proposal still must meet other requirements that include restoring the land once mining ends.

“It’s an unfortunate ruling, a bad ruling, for state lands,” said Nathan Johnson, a lawyer with the Ohio Environmental Council. “Obviously, strip mining is more damaging than underground mining.”

ODNR should perhaps be prepared to purchase mineral rights if owners threaten to use them to mine park lands, Johnson said.

The state does not own all of the mineral rights in 24 of 74 parks, 18 of 21 state forests and 53 of 136 wildlife areas and nature preserves.

The two largest, in terms of mineral-rights acreage, are Zaleski State Forest (19,700 acres) in Athens and Vinton counties and Tar Hollow State Forest (15,007 acres) in Hocking, Ross and Vinton counties.