## Facts

- Stevens County had a subdivision/short-plat ordinance requiring a subdivision application to include the signatures of all persons with an ownership interest in the land to be subdivided.
- Robert Harrison owned the mineral interests in an 80-acre tract of land (a severed mineral estate).
- Thomas and Barbara Crain owned the surface estate of 20 acres within that larger tract, and their surface ownership was subject to Harrison’s mineral interests.
- The Crains filed a county short-plat application to subdivide their 20-acre surface parcel.
- The Crains did not obtain Harrison’s signature on the application.
- The Stevens County planning department approved the short plat.
- Harrison appealed the approval to the county hearing examiner, arguing the ordinance required his signature because he had an ownership interest (the mineral estate) affecting the land being subdivided.
- The hearing examiner affirmed the planning department’s approval.
- Harrison sought review in superior court under Washington’s Land Use Petition Act (LUPA), and the superior court reversed the hearing examiner.
- The Crains appealed the superior court’s ruling to the Washington Court of Appeals.

## Issues

1. Whether a severed mineral-interest owner is a person with an “ownership interest” in land being short-platted such that a county ordinance requires the mineral owner’s signature on a surface subdivision application.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals reversed the superior court and reinstated the hearing examiner’s decision approving the short plat.
- The court treated Harrison’s mineral interest as a separate estate from the surface parcel the Crains sought to subdivide.
- Any surface-use rights tied to mineral ownership (to access and develop minerals) did not make Harrison a co-owner of the surface estate for purposes of the ordinance’s signature requirement.
- Reading the ordinance in context, the phrase “ownership interest in the land to be subdivided” referred to the owners of the estate being divided by the plat (the surface/fee interest), not holders of severed subsurface interests.
- The hearing examiner’s interpretation of the ordinance was not an erroneous legal interpretation under LUPA, so the superior court should not have set it aside.

## Legal Principles

- A mineral estate can be severed from the surface estate, creating distinct property interests held by different parties.
- A mineral-interest owner may have limited rights to enter and use the surface as reasonably necessary to explore for and remove minerals, but those rights function as limited use rights connected to mineral development rather than general ownership of the surface.
- A local subdivision ordinance requiring signatures from persons with an “ownership interest” is ordinarily read to apply to those whose estate is being subdivided by the plat; it does not automatically include holders of separate, severed mineral interests.
- Under LUPA, courts review local land-use decisions on defined statutory grounds; a court errs when it replaces a permissible local interpretation of an ordinance with a broader reading not supported by the ordinance’s text and context.

## Conclusion

The Washington Court of Appeals held that Harrison’s severed mineral interest did not make him an “owner” of the surface land being short-platted within the meaning of Stevens County’s signature requirement, so the county could approve the Crains’ short plat without Harrison’s signature and the hearing examiner’s approval was reinstated.


Harrison v. County of Stevens, 61 P.3d 1202 (2003)