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The General Mining Law of 1872 promotes the development of western lands. The law waives royalties on extracted minerals and sells public land at between $2.50 and $5.00 per acre to mining corporations. This unfettered giveaway has left behind more than half a million abandoned hardrock mines that will cost taxpayers a conservatively-estimated $32 billion to clean up.
To update this relic, Congressman Nick Rahall has introduced The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007, H.R. 2262. The bill would
- End the giveaway of public lands
- Require a minimal 8% royalty on net smelter return
- Require the hard rock mining industry to comply with basic environmental reclamation standards.
- Create a fund to reclaim and restore land and water resources harmed by past mineral activities
- Requiring the mining industry to pay for the cleanup of its own mess
- Allow the public to retain ownership over the land leased to mining companies and protect it from unreasonable degradation.
More information is available from Taxpayers for Common Sense, and EARTHWORKS.
On October, 2003 a legal opinion issued by the Bush
Administration will permit unlimited toxic waste dumping by companies
that mine for gold, silver and other precious metals on public lands
owned by U.S. taxpayers. The decision, which was approved by Interior Secretary Gale Norton,
attempts to nullify a limit on mine dumps set in federal mining
law. For each 20-acre mining claim, the law allows 5 additional
"mill site" acres for activities secondary to mining.
When the law was passed in 1872, a mill site provided room for equipment
to process newly-extracted ore, but modern mining techniques and
pollution are dramatically different and more dangerous now. Chemical
leach technology, widespread since the 1970s, uses poisons like
cyanide to extract trace amounts of metal from tons of earth. Mill
sites are now used for dumping these giant piles of contaminated
waste rock and tailings. The new opinion directly contradicts an opinion issued in 1997 by
Clinton Administration. Mining companies,
seeking more public land for dumping toxic waste rock, have succeeded
in pressuring the Bush Administration into reversing that interpretation
of the law.
At the request of industry, Interior Secretary
Gale Norton has convened a Task Force that is examining proposals
to change federal financial assurance rules. The hard rock mining,
coal mining and oil and gas industries claim that they are unable
to get surety bonds, and that federal rules need to be weakened
in response to this "crisis."
Hard rock mining firms are among the international
corporations pushing for free trade agreements that undercut the
ability of local, state and national governments to protect the
interests of their citizens.
Reclaiming
Democracy: Why mining activists should care about Fast Track &
Free Trade |
