Sarah Francisco

PDF: Amicus Brief

The Southern Environmental Law Center and 14 other environmental groups have bored into a growing Appalachian rock-mining and mineral rights fight, filing court papers in support of Tennessee’s legal effort to stop rock mining on the Cumberland Plateau.

Saying more than 450,000 acres of public and private property is at risk if a Hamilton County Chancery Court ruling from last year stands, law center attorney Sarah Francisco said the groups filed their brief Monday with the Tennessee Court of Appeals, where the Volunteer State’s appeal is now pending. Land in 11 East Tennessee counties is involved, she said.

“The significance of this case is not only for the Cumberland Trail State Park, which is a very important resource, but it also is significant for public and private lands across the plateau,” Ms. Francisco said. “If the Chancery Court opinion stands, it could open the door to this kind of rock extraction on thousands of acres of public and private lands against the wishes of the surface owners.”

Tisha Calabrese-Benton, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, called the move “unprecedented.”

“This underscores the importance of this case,” she said. “It is not just park land at risk. Many homeowners could one day wake up to see their yards removed. We welcome the help from these many respected organizations.”

Last year the Florida-based Lahiere-Hill company, which owns the mineral rights in the park, paid contractors with front-end loaders and other large machinery to dig out sandstone rock from ravine walls in the park near Soddy-Daisy and Chattanooga. The operation tore up 50 to 100 yards of the Cumberland Trail before state officials discovered the damage and filed an injunction request.

The mined rock is increasingly used for decorative landscaping and home building.

At the time, Chancellor Frank Brown declined to rule on the question of whether rock is a mineral, but he did allow the rock-mining company to continue excavating in the park as long as workers stayed 25 feet away from the actual Cumberland Trail.

The separation, or “severance,” of land surface ownership from mineral rights is common throughout the plateau and dates from the region’s coal and timber histories. In many instances, coal companies, which originally owned the land, sold just the surface rights to timber companies and retained the mining and mineral rights in what is called a “mineral reservation.”

From 2001 to 2004, Tennessee acquired more than 5,000 acres of the new Cumberland Trail State Park in Hamilton County from Bowater, one of those timber companies. The mineral rights were not included.

The brief submitted Monday by the environmental groups argues that, unless specifically included in the deed, “rock should not be considered a ‘mineral,’ because the only way to obtain rock is by excavation, which destroys the surface and essentially deprives the surface owner of their property.”

Lahiere-Hill attorney Rick Hitchcock, of Chattanooga, declined to comment Monday on the new court filing, saying he shouldn’t talk about a pending case.

Last year in the Chancery Court case, he brought a geology expert to testify that sandstone is a mineral. Tennessee has conflicting laws and state attorney general rulings on the question. The state does not regulate the rock extraction operations as mining, but the Department of Revenue allows counties to tax the stone as a mined product, officials said.

Rock suit

15 groups supporting state:

Southern Environmental Law Center

Cumberland Trail Conference

Sierra Club

Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning

Save Our Cumberland Mountains

American Hiking Society

Cherokee Forest Voices

The Land Trust for Tennessee

National Parks Conservation Association

The Nature Conservancy

Obed Watershed Community Association

Tennessee Clean Water Network

Tennessee Forests Council Project

Tennessee Parks and Greenways Foundation

Tennessee River Gorge Trust