1872 Mining Law: time for an update?

Congress considers imposing new royalties on minerals and stricter environmental rules.

from the May 16, 2007 edition

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Ashland, Ore. - Mining in the American West – the search for gold, silver, copper, uranium, and other "hardrock" minerals – is as old as those first dusty codgers looking to stake a lucrative claim and strike it rich. It's older than that if you count the early Spanish conquistadors.

Since then, it's grown to a multibillion-dollar industry, much of it owned by foreign investors. The problem, as critics see it, is that this extraction of natural resources is governed mainly by a law signed 135 years ago by President Ulysses S. Grant.

Now, with a Democratic majority in Congress, the likelihood of bringing that law and the practices it regulates into the 21st century is greater than it's ever been.

A new proposal by Rep. Nick Rahall (D) of West Virginia would impose an 8 percent royalty on hardrock minerals. (Coal, oil, and natural gas already pay such royalties.) It would also stiffen environmental protections by requiring mine operators to submit land reclamation plans before obtaining a permit to mine on federal land.

Much of the royalty revenue, which could amount to $100 million a year, would be used to help clean up the worst of what the Environmental Protection Agency estimates are 500,000 abandoned hardrock mines around the West. Many are highly toxic, including several dozen Superfund sites.

"The Mining Law of 1872 played a role in the development of the West," Representative Rahall, chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, said in introducing his bill last week. "But it also left a staggering legacy of poisoned streams, abandoned waste dumps, and maimed landscapes."

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