Who Owns Vermont’s Rocks:
A case for collecting economic rent to offset the depletion of nonrenewable
mineral deposits
Current Management Structure
•Act 250- Environmental Protection Permitting Process- Great for
environmental concerns but does not address depletion of these non
renewable resources nor any type of financial monitoring
•Property Rights Majority of mining occurs on privately owned property
held by several mining corporations. They do as the please as long as the pass
Act 250 regulations. There is no distinction between surface rights and
subsurface rights.
•State Revenue- The only revenue is from property tax. List land values do
not take into account the value of subsurface mining deposits or the value of
what is extracted
•That’s it- There is very little management structure compared to other
natural resources in the state
Vermont Mining Revenue
2005
Production/Extraction Value
96,800,000
Direct Mining Earnings
63,000,000
Listed Property Value
Property Taxes
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
( includes state tax of 1% and, average municipal tax of 1.79%)
132,228,257
3,678,990
Property taxes is just on listed property value
If we add in extraction value into annual land assessment then in 2005 the state received only
1.6% in property tax
Is this 1.6% enough to offset the depletion of these non renewable resources?
What happens when they are gone?
Loss of jobs, currently 2,600.
Mining companies leave a wasteland of abandoned mines – who pays the clean up?
Indirect side effects? Tourism, depletion of habitat, Vermont loses a natural resource
Time to make changes
• National Mining Act of 1872 - being changed to a royalty system – meant
to pay for billions of environmental clean up – estimated at 35 billion
• Alaska Permanent Fund- money generated from the depletion of oil
reserves put into trust fund to offset the impact and benefit current and
future citizens of Alaska
• Other state and countries- are catching on to common ownership- we live
in a different world– resources are limited
• Lets start a Vermont Permanent Fund!- if we collected 10% of the
extraction value in 2005, Vermont would have $9.68 million to be put in
trust fund to offset the depletion of non-renewable mineral resources and to
help pay for environmental management.
• Bottom line - as mineral reserves get lower mining companies revenue
rises because Vermont’s management is outdated
• Vermont needs to rethink how it manages its non-renewable resources.
When they’re gone they’re gone
• Citizens of Vermont have a birthright to these natural resources
• Legislation needs to reclaim subsurface property rights on behalf of the
citizens of Vermont