S.O.P. Land Ownership (That's Not Land)

[Rook]

As always, I wish to gather a few opinions on the issue before offering my own to avoid the possibility of influencing the responses I get.

I am against Eminent domain and a strong proponent that someone who own's property is sovereign in their ownership of the land. What this discussion is about related directly to what ownership of land means.

When you own land it has boundaries two dimensionally, from that stream to the ridge line, from fence post to fencepost. I am curious to see how far, three dimensionally, you feel ownership extends. Do you own the airspace above the land? How high? If there's a limit, then that suggests that buying blocks of airspace is an option. How would that be enforced? How deep into the ground is owned? Who owns the water table? Precious metal deposits? Etc.

As I said, not a discussion quite yet, but a gathering of opinions.

[Mira O'Halloran]

Speaking three dimentionally, I believe that if you own the top of the land, you own what's under it - For example: if you want to grow plants of some form, you'll need to control what's under the earth so what you want to grow will grow. On a farming level: there's no point in putting in 10 acres of organic barley if the factory next door is flushing herbicide leftovers and residue through old leaking pipes 10 metres underneath your property - it'll kill your organic certification if it doesn't outright kill the plants. As for ownership, I'm thinking, two, maybe three thousand metres down.
And I also think that you should own a part of the air space about your house, but I'm not sure of how high... Reduction in noise pollution, more diluted air pollution, the option of putting tall structures (like tall windmills) is a more availible option.
Thats about it from me for the moment.

[Rook]

All right, as promised, my opinions:

When you own land, you own all of the land, all the way down to as deep as people can dig. If a pipeline of some sort needs to run underneath your property it is their obligation to ensure that you give permission or are compensated for it. Likewise ownership of the land is ownership of the air, though not as high as we can fly. It is unreasonable to expect people to try and navigate a gridwork of fly zones in the air, thus ownership of the air extends to the minimum limits for safe air travel.

[Rook]

This needs discussion.

[Rauve]

I personnaly think that it depends on the land owned. For example, a private island could probably enforce a higher air space limit than a farm,
but a farm would find it easier to enforce rules of underground territory than, say, a household property.

[Rook]

It's easier to enforce underground territory when you're on a small home lot in the city, as it's nearly impossible to just 'build a tunnel' without having any surface aspect to the construction. A farmer with 500 acres could very well miss a team with little integrity that built quickly through the fringes of his territory when he wasn't looking.

A private island, unless it is a sovereign territory, has no more right to airspace than anyone else. By the same rights a farmer who owns a peninsula should have those rights too. Exceptions are the road to hell and allow others to take advantage.