Current Issues Affecting The OLP
After numerous reports of seismic testing activity in and around the Rock Run area during the summer of 2011, a search of the Lycoming County Courthouse records has revealed that Anadarko Petroleum have purchased, not leased, but purchased, a 50% share of the mineral rights under Loyalsock State Forest land in a checkerboard-type pattern that reaches the Rock Run watershed in parts, while being mostly located to the south and east of it, up on Sullivan and Potash Mountains, and to the east around the old Masten town site, right in the heart of the circular route of this nationally-acclaimed hiking and backpacking trail.
When the Commonwealth originally purchased the forest land in 1933, it did not acquire the mineral rights now owned by Anadarko, but apparently did acquire other mineral rights in mostly adjacent rectangular blocks either surrounding or touching the Anadarko rights in what looks to be about a 20,000 acre region. We understand that normally subsurface rights take precedence over surface ownership rights and that the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources would be stuck having to grant some kind of access to Anadarko and the owners of the other half of those rights to get their eons in creation windfall, but it is believed that the deed to the property limited the surface rights access to a fifty -year term – a term that has long since expired. What we don’t know is whether the DCNR is taking full advantage of its legal rights to stop or slow and minimize any development in that precious wild wonder in the forested ecosystem that makes up the Rock Run and Old Logger’s Path region.
Additionally, the storms that hit the area in fall of 2011 washed out many of the bridges in the area. Vehicle and pedestrian access to the area around Masten is restricted or impossible as of the last time I was there in October of 2012.
Read more about this topic: Old Loggers Path
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