03.24.16

Dems Request Hearing on Abandoned Mine Legislation

Tucson, Ariz. – In an attempt to spur action to begin meaningfully addressing the nationwide problem of abandoned hardrock mines, Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and five Democrats on the Committee sent a letter this morning to Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee Chairman Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) to request a hearing on two bills that would allow these abandoned mines to be tackled head-on.

It’s estimated that 500,000 of these sites exist, some of which are leaching millions of gallons of acid mine waste into rivers and streams each year with no end in sight. The cost to address all these sites was estimated by the Bush Administration to be between $20 billion and $54 billion dollars, yet unlike abandoned coal mines, the hardrock mining industry does not contribute anything to help remediate this historical legacy of pollution.

The letter – signed by Ranking Member Grijalva, Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee Ranking Member Alan S. Lowenthal (D-Calif.) and Natural Resources Committee Members  Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.), Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) – requests that Democrats and Republicans work together to develop a comprehensive and meaningful solution to the problem of abandoned hardrock mines. It reads in part:

Defusing these ticking time bombs and fully reclaiming abandoned hardrock mines will require a comprehensive solution. While voluntary and philanthropic efforts may provide relief in certain instances, they cannot come close to truly addressing the vast scale of the problem. That will require a real commitment from industry, much in the same way that the coal industry has supported the cleanup of abandoned coal mines for nearly 40 years.

The Hardrock Mining Reform and Reclamation Act of 2015 (H.R. 963), would establish a mechanism to raise the necessary funds to clean up this country’s abandoned hardrock mines, as well as comprehensively reform the nation’s antiquated hardrock mining laws, which have been in place largely unchanged since 1872. The Abandoned Mine Reclamation Safety Act (H.R. 4323), adopts lessons learned from the Gold King release of August 2015 to lower the risk of future uncontrolled releases of wastewater from abandoned mines, ensure that response and notification plans are developed in the event that an uncontrolled release does occur, and incorporates other recommendations from the Gold King Mine technical review.

The full letter is available at, http://1.usa.gov/1UcIqGT. 

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