Red Lodge Clearinghouse

"They still operate under a law from the days of the pick and the mule," one of the Pew Campaign for Responsible Mining ads says as shovels clang and and pioneer music plays. "The modern West needs a modern mining law."

A lack of environmental protections has left 40 percent of Western watersheds polluted by hardrock mining while new mining claims move closer to treasured natural resources, the ads say, adding that hardrock miners pay no federal royalties on their production.

When President Ulysses S. Grant signed the mining bill, the ad says, the West was still a frontier, sparsely populated and undeveloped. Settlers and speculators needed financial inducements to go there, so the law allows privatization, or patenting, of public resources for $2.50 to $5.00 per acre.

While Congress has renewed a moratorium on such land purchases every year since 1994, Pew says a permanent ban is needed. "Americans don't want to see their lands sold off at the bargain basement rates," said Pete Kolbenschlag of Pew's Colorado operation. "The moratorium is not sufficient to stop it."

Pew's Western campaign follows print ads it placed in Capitol Hill publications last week aimed at pushing Western senators to write and pass a version of the hardrock mining bill comparable to one that the House passed last year.

The House bill, H.R. 2262, 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 do away with patenting and grant authorities significantly more control of where hardrock mining can take place, especially in environmentally sensitive lands like national parks, something opponents argue is unnecessarily burdensome.

Senate leaders

New Mexico Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D) and Pete Domenici (R) have both spoken out for the need for reform and are preparing to create a Senate version of the House bill sponsored by Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.). The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Bingaman chairs, held a hearing on the 1872 law last month.

The National Mining Association, has been supportive of efforts to reform the 1872 law but not of the House legislation. The group has said it would support royalties only on the net income of new mines and is pushing for "security of tenure" provisions to allow companies that secure permits and loans for mines to continue working them.

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