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The House passed a bill (H.R. 2262) last year that supporters say would reform the law, and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has held several hearings in the hope of following suit. But the last hearing was two months ago, and with a shortened legislative calendar, the mining law could reach its 137th birthday unchanged.

The reason: a mutual lack of understanding and agreement among senators and committee staff on what issues need to be addressed and how best to deal with them.

"We're frustrated at the pace, we're frustrated we haven't made much progress, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop," said committee Democratic spokesman Bill Wicker.

So far, negotiations have occurred on the staff level, and several staffers said there has been some progress on certain issues, but major sticking points remain the royalty and environmental provisions of the bill.

They also say that there has been a lack of guidance from interested members on what issues such a bill must tackle, and without a set of clear objectives, staffers said they are left in a holding pattern.

"It's the time in the process that members that want to participate lay their cards on the table," said Matt Letourneau, spokesman for committee ranking member Pete Domenici (R-N.M.).

Lawmakers first must determine to what extent the mining law needs amending, and then whether to write a narrow piece of legislation that targets only the shortfalls in the original law or whether it should be a more comprehensive bill.

The 1872 law permits privatization, or patenting, of public resources for $2.50-$5.00 per acre. It makes no references to or demands for the protection of the environment and requires no royalties on the production of metals such as copper or gold on federal lands.

While Congress has renewed a temporary moratorium on such land purchases every year since 1994, hardrock mining continues to pay no federal royalties. Some estimates show the government has missed out on more than $245 million in royalties on mineral reserves since the 1872 law was passed.

Most advocates of changing the law argue that any royalties should be linked to the cleanup of abandoned mine lands, but others have argued for a simple reclamation fee instead.

Though cleanup funds will likely come from a royalty, the question remains as to what kind of royalty senators will adopt. A gross royalty on existing and new operations would offer significantly higher revenues, but the mining industry has called for a lower royalty on net profits of a mine, and even then only from new mining operations.

Efforts in the Senate

Historically, efforts to change the 1872 law have started strong in the House but ultimately faltered in the Senate. Twice, the House Natural Resources Committee has passed legislation to reform the law, but both efforts failed in the upper body.

Last fall, the House passed legislation from Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), H.R. 2262, which would 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.

The bill would also grant authorities significantly more control over where hardrock mining can take place, especially in environmentally sensitive lands including national parks, something opponents argue is unnecessarily burdensome.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Domenici said immediately after the House bill's passage that they would start with a "clean slate" in the Senate and hoped to produce a bill by the end of the Congress.

Staff from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) office have also been taking part in the negotiations. Reid, whose father was a miner and whose son-in-law is a lobbyist for gold-mining giant Newmont, has adamantly opposed the House version because of its possible effects on the mining industry.

Stephen Krupin of Reid's office said the leader has been working closely with the committee's leadership on the issue but that "there are still difficult issues that need be resolved."

Fighting the clock

If Bingaman's committee does produce a bill, it will have to contend with both the controversial nature of the legislation and the limited congressional calendar.

"It still may be possible, though clearly not probable," said Luke Popovich of the National Mining Association.

Confidence was high during hearings earlier this year that a bill could be produced, but recently, members of the committee have begun to shift their tone to reflect the slow progress on a Senate version.

"It's obviously not going to happen in the near future," said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.).

Some members have taken it upon themselves to introduce legislation.

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).

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) plans to introduce her own bill in the near future, her office said. Unlike Feinstein's legislation, Cantwell's bill is not expected to address abandoned mines.

But observers agree that the only reform bill that can pass must come from the committee itself.

"There is a chance that we might see other pieces of legislation pop out, but without Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici, I don't think anything is going to happen," said Lauren Pagel, policy director of Earthworks.

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