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As members of the committee grapple with how best to update the 1872 law that governs hardrock mining on federal lands, Cantwell said the different interests of panel members may make those issues difficult to include in a bill the committee would approve.

"If you look at who's on the Energy Committee in the Senate, it's a little different makeup than the body as a whole, and I would think some of these provisions we might not be able to get through committee but we would be able to add in on the floor," Cantwell told reporters during a conference call last week.

The panel has been working for months to develop a bill that would bring the hardrock mining law, which as of last week has been in effect for 136 years, into the 21st century. To do so, the senators must determine if and what kind of royalty hardrock mining operations should be charged and what sort of environmental safeguards should be included.

Last fall, the House passed legislation from Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) to impose an 8 percent royalty on the gross returns on minerals from new claims and a 4 percent royalty on existing claims filed under the law. Part of the proceeds would go toward the cleanup of thousands of abandoned mines across the country. H.R. 2262 would also grant authorities significantly more control over where hardrock mining can take place, especially in environmentally sensitive lands including national parks, a development opponents argue is unnecessarily burdensome.

The Senate panel's leaders have pledged to develop their own bill, but movement has slowed since the last hearing on the issue in March. "We're still having discussions among the members of the committee as to whether we can get a consensus on how to proceed on mining reform," Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said earlier this week. "We haven't made a final judgment."

Jane Danowitz, director of the Pew Campaign for Responsible Mining, speculated that the Senate may also be feeling pressure from the mining industry to drag its feet on producing a bill that could hurt its industry when prices for metals like gold and uranium are at an all-time high.

"The current deal from the U.S. government is just too good to give up," Danowitz said.

Cantwell said she believed when the House bill was passed it created a sense that the Senate would move quickly with legislation that would only deal with some of the financial issues without addressing the environmental questions such as abandoned mines.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a bill in March (S. 2750) that would create a federal abandoned mine cleanup fund. It would use the same royalty scheme as the House bill in addition to high maintenance fees and a 0.3 percent reclamation fee on all hardrock mineral mining on federal, state, tribal, local and private claims.

That requirement is modeled after a similar provision in the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act meant to fund the cleanup of abandoned coal mining sites (E&E Daily, March 13).

"What's happened is Senator Feinstein and I have tried to lay out the issues on the environmental side, which I think may have slowed down some of the efforts," Cantwell said.

Cantwell plans to introduce her own legislation soon that would deal with the other pieces of the puzzle, including increasing the amount of lands that would be off-limits to mining and increasing local governments' ability to protect certain lands from hardrock mining.

Another factor is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has adamantly opposed the House version because of its possible effects on the mining industry.

Cantwell and others said Reid's office has been heavily involved in discussions with the committee's staff, and Danowitz said she hopes he will be instrumental in getting a bill moving forward. "His staff has been engaged, and we're hoping that he'll provide the leadership that only he can provide," she said.

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