THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION AND REFORM
OF THE MINING LAW OF 1872
Background: The Mining Law of 1872, signed into law by President Ulysses S.
Grant, is the last great 19th Century public land law. Designed to fuel the westward
expansion and promote industrial growth, it threw open the public lands to
claimstaking, mining, and privatization in a freewheeling way fully consonant with
the Robber Baron era. Although its scope (the kind of minerals it covers and the
kinds of public lands to which it applies) has been whittled away by a combination
of executive and legislative action over the last 128 years, its basic framework
remained intact until recent years. It still governs the extraction of so-called
"hardrock" minerals (such as gold, silver, copper, uranium, molybdenum, lead, and
zinc) on hundreds of millions of acres of national forest lands and public lands
managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Reform of the Mining Law has been sought for many decades. When Secretary of
the Interior Stewart Udall left office in January 1969 after eight years, he described
Mining Law reform as "the most important piece of unfinished business on the
Nation's natural resource agenda." When the Clinton Administration took office in
1993, repeated reform efforts had met with little success. The Mining Law still
allowed companies to gain title to federal lands for as little as $2.50 per acre, and
environmental oversight was weak and the applicable regulations plagued by
loopholes.
The Clinton Administration's Position: From its earliest days, the Clinton
Administration has aggressively promoted reform of this legal antique. Our reform
platform had several components:
--An end to "patenting," the process by which valuable federal land is privatized for
as little as $2.50 per acre. Under this feature of the law, for example, Secretary
Babbitt was forced in 1994 to deed over a tract of federal land in Nevada
containing an estimated ten billion dollars worth of gold for about $10,000.
--tougher environmental regulation, to ensure that all mining operations are
conducted in a way that protects the public lands, air, water, and other values
such as Indian sacred sites; and are not allowed to operate if they would cause
undue degradation of these resources; and that all operations provide financial
assurances so that, in the event of bankruptcy or other difficulties, cleanup and
reclamation could occur, and taxpayers are not left holding the bag.
-closing off some special areas of the public lands to mining under this law,
through so-called executive withdrawals.
-requiring public land hardrock to pay a royalty to the federal treasury, with the
proceeds earmarked to a fund to clean up pollution from abandoned mines. The
United States government is practically alone in not recovering a royalty from the
extraction of hardrock minerals it owns. State and private landowners across the
U.S. routinely receive royalties from mining their lands, as do Indian tribes and
governments and landowners around the world. Moreover, coal, oil and gas
producers on federal lands have paid a substantial royalty to the U.S. for eighty
years. Cleanup of the thousands of abandoned mine sites found on public lands --
which are sometimes dangerous and often the source of continuing water pollution
and other environmental harms -- could go a lot faster with funds dedicated from a
hardrock mining royalty.
The Clinton Administration's Achievements: We have achieved our goals, with one
major exception noted below.
-An end to patenting: Starting in 1994, with strong Administration support, the
Congress has annually enacted a prohibition on patenting (except for a limited
"grandfather clause" that directs us to act on some long pending applications). We
have supported a permanent ban, but industry supporters have blocked Congress
from enacting it. To forestall a new "patent" rush, Congress must renew that
moratorium each year.
-On January 19, new environmental regulations governing hardrock mining on
BLM-managed public lands take effect. The first major revision of these
regulations in two decades, they close loopholes in the former regulations and
toughen environmental standards. They require all operations to obtain advance
approval, and require them to provide higher levels of financial assurance for
cleanup costs.. They also carry into effect for the first time a requirement, enacted
into law in 1976, which directs the Secretary to disapprove mining operations that
cause "undue degradation" of the public lands and resources. These final rules
came at the end of a long struggle with industry supporters in Congress, who used
a string of appropriation riders to delay their completion. The President stood firm,
and the rules are now in place.
-This Administration has also reined in some of the more lawless industry
practices. For example, the modern hardrock mining industry mines ever-lower
grades of ore, which means it moves mountains of earth and rock for ounces of
metal. The industry wants to use vast acreages of public land for its waste rock
dumps and tailings piles. The Administration has enforced well-defined limits in the
Mining Law -- limits long recognized by the industry and by such blue-ribbon
bodies as the Public Land Law Review Commission -- on the use of public lands
for this purpose. Although the industry claims we have invented these limits, it has
not challenged our enforcement of these clear terms of the old law in court.
-The Administration closed off millions of acres of special areas of federal land
across the West from the Mining Law, through (a) designation of more than a
dozen new national monuments under the Antiquities Act; and (b) executive
withdrawals of such areas as the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana, an area near
Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, and the Siskiyou-Kalmiopsis
region of southern Oregon. In addition, Congress has acted to legislate
withdrawals of other areas (such as Steens Mountain in Oregon) in response to
Secretary Babbitt's proposal to withdraw the lands through the Antiquities Act.
-Our one failure is not being able to persuade the Congress to overcome industry
opposition to enact a meaningful royalty on hardrock mineral production. During
the government shutdown in 1995, the Republicans in Congress included a
"sham" hardrock royalty in their omnibus budget bill, but President Clinton vetoed
the bill. (The royalty was so riddled with loopholes and grandfather clauses that it
would have raised, according to Congress's own budget office, about $1 million
per year from the entire multibillion dollar industry.) Coal, oil and gas, and timber
industries routinely pay substantial value for the public resources they extract.
Even recreationists now routinely pay to use public lands. There is no excuse for
Congress to continue to exempt the hardrock mining industry from this policy.
The Clinton Administration Legacy: A better environment and a thriving mining
industry.
There is no denying the Administration has had some major differences and some
spirited battles with the hardrock mining industry and its supporters in Congress.
Yet often overlooked amid these noisy disagreements is that gold production in
the United States has increased manyfold in the last twenty years, with more gold
produced in the last several years than any other comparable period in history.
(Figures on federal land contributions to total hardrock mineral production are
hard to come by, because of fractured federal/state/private ownership patterns
that characterize many major mines.) This Administration has approved hundreds
of mining plans of operations every year. The industry continues to employ
thousands of people in well-paying jobs that sustain rural communities in the West.
Although for decades the industry has said that the end of patenting and too much
environmental regulation will drive it abroad, a recent international survey of
mining company executives showed Nevada is still, as it has long been, the most
attractive place in the world for hardrock mining investment. As this shows, the
industry's overall health is much more closely tied to political stability and
commodity price levels set on world markets than it is to domestic environmental
regulation.
Through good old American business skill and competitiveness, adapting methods
of operation and developing and taking advantage of new technologies, the
hardrock mining industry has managed to do very well even though environmental
regulation is toughening and more and more federal lands are off limits to the
industry. In short, here as in many other areas of American life, this Administration
has demonstrated that there need be no conflict between a healthy economy and
a healthy environment.
OF THE MINING LAW OF 1872
Background: The Mining Law of 1872, signed into law by President Ulysses S.
Grant, is the last great 19th Century public land law. Designed to fuel the westward
expansion and promote industrial growth, it threw open the public lands to
claimstaking, mining, and privatization in a freewheeling way fully consonant with
the Robber Baron era. Although its scope (the kind of minerals it covers and the
kinds of public lands to which it applies) has been whittled away by a combination
of executive and legislative action over the last 128 years, its basic framework
remained intact until recent years. It still governs the extraction of so-called
"hardrock" minerals (such as gold, silver, copper, uranium, molybdenum, lead, and
zinc) on hundreds of millions of acres of national forest lands and public lands
managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Reform of the Mining Law has been sought for many decades. When Secretary of
the Interior Stewart Udall left office in January 1969 after eight years, he described
Mining Law reform as "the most important piece of unfinished business on the
Nation's natural resource agenda." When the Clinton Administration took office in
1993, repeated reform efforts had met with little success. The Mining Law still
allowed companies to gain title to federal lands for as little as $2.50 per acre, and
environmental oversight was weak and the applicable regulations plagued by
loopholes.
The Clinton Administration's Position: From its earliest days, the Clinton
Administration has aggressively promoted reform of this legal antique. Our reform
platform had several components:
--An end to "patenting," the process by which valuable federal land is privatized for
as little as $2.50 per acre. Under this feature of the law, for example, Secretary
Babbitt was forced in 1994 to deed over a tract of federal land in Nevada
containing an estimated ten billion dollars worth of gold for about $10,000.
--tougher environmental regulation, to ensure that all mining operations are
conducted in a way that protects the public lands, air, water, and other values
such as Indian sacred sites; and are not allowed to operate if they would cause
undue degradation of these resources; and that all operations provide financial
assurances so that, in the event of bankruptcy or other difficulties, cleanup and
reclamation could occur, and taxpayers are not left holding the bag.
-closing off some special areas of the public lands to mining under this law,
through so-called executive withdrawals.
-requiring public land hardrock to pay a royalty to the federal treasury, with the
proceeds earmarked to a fund to clean up pollution from abandoned mines. The
United States government is practically alone in not recovering a royalty from the
extraction of hardrock minerals it owns. State and private landowners across the
U.S. routinely receive royalties from mining their lands, as do Indian tribes and
governments and landowners around the world. Moreover, coal, oil and gas
producers on federal lands have paid a substantial royalty to the U.S. for eighty
years. Cleanup of the thousands of abandoned mine sites found on public lands --
which are sometimes dangerous and often the source of continuing water pollution
and other environmental harms -- could go a lot faster with funds dedicated from a
hardrock mining royalty.
The Clinton Administration's Achievements: We have achieved our goals, with one
major exception noted below.
-An end to patenting: Starting in 1994, with strong Administration support, the
Congress has annually enacted a prohibition on patenting (except for a limited
"grandfather clause" that directs us to act on some long pending applications). We
have supported a permanent ban, but industry supporters have blocked Congress
from enacting it. To forestall a new "patent" rush, Congress must renew that
moratorium each year.
-On January 19, new environmental regulations governing hardrock mining on
BLM-managed public lands take effect. The first major revision of these
regulations in two decades, they close loopholes in the former regulations and
toughen environmental standards. They require all operations to obtain advance
approval, and require them to provide higher levels of financial assurance for
cleanup costs.. They also carry into effect for the first time a requirement, enacted
into law in 1976, which directs the Secretary to disapprove mining operations that
cause "undue degradation" of the public lands and resources. These final rules
came at the end of a long struggle with industry supporters in Congress, who used
a string of appropriation riders to delay their completion. The President stood firm,
and the rules are now in place.
-This Administration has also reined in some of the more lawless industry
practices. For example, the modern hardrock mining industry mines ever-lower
grades of ore, which means it moves mountains of earth and rock for ounces of
metal. The industry wants to use vast acreages of public land for its waste rock
dumps and tailings piles. The Administration has enforced well-defined limits in the
Mining Law -- limits long recognized by the industry and by such blue-ribbon
bodies as the Public Land Law Review Commission -- on the use of public lands
for this purpose. Although the industry claims we have invented these limits, it has
not challenged our enforcement of these clear terms of the old law in court.
-The Administration closed off millions of acres of special areas of federal land
across the West from the Mining Law, through (a) designation of more than a
dozen new national monuments under the Antiquities Act; and (b) executive
withdrawals of such areas as the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana, an area near
Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, and the Siskiyou-Kalmiopsis
region of southern Oregon. In addition, Congress has acted to legislate
withdrawals of other areas (such as Steens Mountain in Oregon) in response to
Secretary Babbitt's proposal to withdraw the lands through the Antiquities Act.
-Our one failure is not being able to persuade the Congress to overcome industry
opposition to enact a meaningful royalty on hardrock mineral production. During
the government shutdown in 1995, the Republicans in Congress included a
"sham" hardrock royalty in their omnibus budget bill, but President Clinton vetoed
the bill. (The royalty was so riddled with loopholes and grandfather clauses that it
would have raised, according to Congress's own budget office, about $1 million
per year from the entire multibillion dollar industry.) Coal, oil and gas, and timber
industries routinely pay substantial value for the public resources they extract.
Even recreationists now routinely pay to use public lands. There is no excuse for
Congress to continue to exempt the hardrock mining industry from this policy.
The Clinton Administration Legacy: A better environment and a thriving mining
industry.
There is no denying the Administration has had some major differences and some
spirited battles with the hardrock mining industry and its supporters in Congress.
Yet often overlooked amid these noisy disagreements is that gold production in
the United States has increased manyfold in the last twenty years, with more gold
produced in the last several years than any other comparable period in history.
(Figures on federal land contributions to total hardrock mineral production are
hard to come by, because of fractured federal/state/private ownership patterns
that characterize many major mines.) This Administration has approved hundreds
of mining plans of operations every year. The industry continues to employ
thousands of people in well-paying jobs that sustain rural communities in the West.
Although for decades the industry has said that the end of patenting and too much
environmental regulation will drive it abroad, a recent international survey of
mining company executives showed Nevada is still, as it has long been, the most
attractive place in the world for hardrock mining investment. As this shows, the
industry's overall health is much more closely tied to political stability and
commodity price levels set on world markets than it is to domestic environmental
regulation.
Through good old American business skill and competitiveness, adapting methods
of operation and developing and taking advantage of new technologies, the
hardrock mining industry has managed to do very well even though environmental
regulation is toughening and more and more federal lands are off limits to the
industry. In short, here as in many other areas of American life, this Administration
has demonstrated that there need be no conflict between a healthy economy and
a healthy environment.
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| Helping to keep mining alive in Alaska |
Kenai Chapter of GPAA
Gold Prospectors of America
Gold Prospectors of America
"Recreational mining is what we do!"