Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 69.djvu/411

 69

STAT.]

PUBLIC LAW

167-JULY

23, 1955

369

in part westward of the ninety-eighth meridian relating to the ownership, control, appropriation, use, and distribution of ground or surface waters within any unpatented mining claim. (c) Except to the extent required for the mining claimant's prospecting, mining or processing operations and uses reasonably incident thereto, or for the construction of buildings or structures in connection therewith, or to provide clearance for such operations or uses, or to the extent authorized by the United States, no claimant of any mining claim hereafter located under the mining laws of the United States shall, prior to issuance of patent therefor, sever, remove, or use any vegetative or other surface resources thereof which are subject to management or disposition by the United States under the preceding subsection (b). Any severance or removal of timber which is permitted under the exceptions of the preceding sentence, other than severance or removal to provide clearance, shall be in accordance with sound principles of forest management. SEC. 5. (a) The head of a Federal department or agency which ing°cUk^ant°8."^"" has the responsibility for administering surface resources of any Publication. lands belonging to the United States may file as to such lands in the office of the Secretary of the Interior, or in such office as the Secretary of the Interior may designate, a request for publication of notice to mining claimants, for determination of surface rights, which request shall contain a description of the lands covered thereby, showing the section or sections of the public land surveys which embrace the lands covered by sucJi request, or if such lands are unsurveyed, either the section or sections which would probably embrace such lands Avhen the public land surveys are extended to such lands or a tie by courses and distances to an approved United States mineral monument. The filing of such request for publication shall be accompanied by an affidavit or affidavits of a person or persons over twenty-oiv.i years of age setting forth that the affiant or affiants have examined the lands involved in a reasonable effort to ascertain whether any person or persons were in actual possession of or engaged in the working of such lands or any part thereof, and, if no jjerson or persons were found to be in actual possession of or engaged in the working of said lands or any part thereof on the date of such examination, setting forth such fact, or, if any person or persons were so found to be m actual possession or engaged in such working on the date of such examination, setting forth the name and address of each such person, unless affiant shall have been unable through reasonable inquiry to obtain information as to the name and address of any such person, in which event the affidavit shall set forth fully the nature and results of such inquiry. The filing of such request for publication shall also be accompanied by the certificate of a title or abstract company, or of a title abstractor, or of an attorney, based upon such company's abstractor's, or attorney's examination of those instruments which are shown by the tract indexes in the county office of record as affecting the lands described in said request, setting forth the name of any person disclosed by said instruments to have an interest in said lands under any unpatented mining claim heretofore located, together with the address of such person if such address is disclosed by such instruments of record. "Tract indexes" as used herein shall mean those indexes, if any, as to surveyed lands identifying instruments as affecting a particular legal subdivision of the public land surveys, and as to unsurveyed lands identifying instruments as affecting a particular probable legal subdivision according to a projected extension of the public land surveys. 54402 O - 55 - 24

�