BedRoc Ltd. v. United States
BedRoc Ltd. brought a suit against the Bureau of Land Management claiming title to the sand and gravel on a property it had leased from the United States under the Pittman Underground Water Act (PUWA). Congress enacted PUWA in 1935 to encourage prospectors in Nevada to find underground water supplies to irrigate the land and make it suitable for farming. PUWA provided that anyone who found such a supply would receive a grant, or "patent," to a parcel of up to 2,560 acres. However, all patents were to contain a "reservation to the United States of all the coal and other valuable minerals in the lands." BedRoc Ltd. leased some land subject to this provision and began selling sand and gravel from the property, and filed suit agains the Bureau of Land Management after it issued a trespass notice. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the United States, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, finding that sand and gravel were considered valuable at the time the PUWA was passed.
Questions Presented:
1. Whether the reservation of "valuable minerals" includes all common materials (such as sand and gravel), without regard to whether the materials located on particular lands were "valuable
minerals" at the time of the patent; and
2. If Watt v. Western Nuclear, 462 U.S. 36 (1983), calls for the application of a per se rule regarding the reservation (or non-reservation) of common materials, whether
congressional intent would be better served by a rule that common materials are not reserved to the government as "valuable minerals."
