Reform 1872 mining law

The Register Guard, Editorial
July 14, 2014

The nation’s General Mining Act recently celebrated its 141st birthday. Congress should make certain this fossilized law, which provides minimal environmental protections and allows hard-rock mining companies to remove billions of dollars of minerals from public lands without paying royalties, doesn’t make it to age 142.

Federal lawmakers should do so by approving a bill introduced last week by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. The legislation, co-sponsored by 19 Democrats, would require that miners who lay claim to gold, silver and other hard-rock minerals on federal land pay royalties to the federal government, just as oil and gas operators, coal miners, timber harvesters and other extractive users of public lands have for decades.

DeFazio’s bill is modeled on legislation approved by the House in 2007. It would charge an 8 percent royalty on new mines and 4 percent on existing ones, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual royalties that would be used to clean up thousands of abandoned mining sites around the country. The Government Accountability Office estimates there are at least 161,000 abandoned mines in western states and Alaska, and more than a fifth of those sites have contaminated surface and groundwater, arsenic-laden piles of tailings and other pollution. Without mining-law reform, U.S. taxpayers will have to foot a clean-up bill that could run as high as $72 billion.

The bill would strengthen environmental safeguards and allow the federal agencies to block mines that endanger the environment. Local, state and tribal governments could petition for permit denials, and mining would be prohibited in wilderness study areas, roadless areas, wild and scenic rivers and other special places.

It would also put an end to the current system that allows companies to acquire or “patent” government land for a few dollars an acre — a practice that made sense in the 1870s when the government was encouraging settlement of the West but that has become an outrageous giveaway.

DeFazio faces an uphill battle. Democrats twice passed similar reforms bills when they controlled the House, but each stalled in the Senate. The current Republican majority in the House opposes any legislation that limits natural resource extraction. In the Senate, reform faces an implacable Democratic foe in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is a miner’s son and whose home state of Nevada has a large mining industry.

The mining industry is certain to protest that DeFazio’s bill would hurt the economy and cost jobs. But every other industry that extracts natural resources from public lands has managed to adjust to modern regulations and to repay a reasonable share of the costs they impose.

It’s time to end the giveaway of public resources to the mining industry, establish environmental standards and provide the funding needed to clean up abandoned mines. Federal lawmakers should support DeFazio’s effort to bring the nation’s mining law into the 21st century.