Drilling & Droning … What’er You Gonna Do?

Our home and our little quarter acre is surrounded by a nice white picket fence … we put it up both the keep our dog in, and to keep intruders out.

We like the way it looks.  And we also like the sense of “ownership” that it conveys.

I believe we own this little piece of land.  I have a deed to the property saying it’s mine. 

And that’s all I thought I needed until recently …

Now I wonder … I’m concerned as to who owns the air space above my property and the mineral rights  below it?

When I used Google to gain some sort of insight, I came across this latin saying: Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos which means “whoever owns the soil, it is theirs up to Heaven and down to Hell.”

http://mentalfloss.com/article/31018/do-you-own-space-above-your-house

This adage may or may not have any sort of legal standing and as I write, I readily admit that haven’t done any research to find out.

Honestly, ownership in this sense is something I had absolutely never worried (or even thought) about.

Real or imagined, I’ve been reading about the threat posed by “Fracking” and “Drones” for some time now.

Then yesterday I visited Barnes & Noble and I was amazed to see that you can buy your very own DRONE there for $299 … yes, they had a display drone set up right beside the Starbucks coffee kiosk!

Admittedly, I hadn’t been to Barnes & Noble in a long time … essentially, not since since I got my (Amazon driven) Kindle reader for Christmas a couple of years ago … so seeing how they are diversifying their product mix was a bit of a surprise.

I made a light-hearted comment about the Barnes & Noble drone in a post on FaceBook and immediately drew a comment from a friend who assured me that if a drone appeared above his home, he would “shoot it down” …

While my first inclination was to agree.  It made me wonder about the right to fly a drone over someone elses house and the right to shoot it down if it bothered you.

And if I can shot down your drone, what can I do when your drill stops going down on your quarter acre and turns 90 degrees to head over toward mine?

I dunno … life just gets more and more complicated.