As Congress considers mining-related legislation, report shows urgent need to modernize hardrock mining laws, make companies pay their fair share for cleaning up mines in exchange for extracting minerals from public land
WASHINGTON – In a report requested by U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M ), the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that federal and state agencies have identified more than 215,000 abandoned hardrock mine sites that pose either a physical safety risk or an environmental risk to the American public. And with hardrock mining companies still financially off-the-hook for cleaning up these abandoned mines, GAO estimated that taxpayers could be stuck with an $11.6 billion cleanup bill to clean up the abandoned mines in the future – on top of the $1.9 billion that was spent over the 10 year period from 2008 to 2017.
The number of dangerous abandoned mines is staggering, as GAO estimated that there could be more than 390,000 additional mines that are not even accounted for in government databases. Today, Udall released the new report to underscore why Congress must act urgently to update the badly outdated 1872 hardrock mining law.
The full report is available HERE.
“This unbiased report underscores that it is past time to update our antiquated hardrock mining laws. It’s simply outrageous – mining companies have stripped gold, silver and other valuable minerals from our public lands without paying a dime for the privilege for nearly 150 years, and federal taxpayers get stuck footing the bill for billions in cleanup costs. Meanwhile, these mines poison our waterways, our land, and our communites,” said Udall, who has introduced mining reform legislation in several Congresses, starting in the aftermath of the massive Gold King Mine spill in Colorado that polluted waters in New Mexico, Utah and Arizona . “As Congress considers legislation that would give the mining industry a new benefit in the form of fast-tracked permits, we absolutely must bring federal hardrock mining laws into the twenty-first century. And we have to start by telling these largely foreign mining companies that they need to pay their fair share to deal with the toxic legacy that mining has left across the West and the nation.”
America’s mining laws have remained relatively untouched since they were established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. Since then, mining companies have taken more than $300 billion worth of gold, silver, copper, and other valuable minerals from our federal public lands without paying a cent in federal royalties to the American people – leaving the public with billions of dollars in cleanup costs at thousands of abandoned mines that continue to pollute waterways across the West.
Until the federal government established requirements in the 1970s — a company could extract hardrock minerals and abandon the mine without reclaiming it, meaning without restoring the land to a usable state. Since then, reclamation and financial assurance requirements have still often failed to meet actual needs, and the Trump administration has recklessly moved to weaken the existing “financial assurance” requirements for large mining projects. With populations growing in the western United States, abandoned mines that were once remote are now much closer to population centers, according to the a U.S. government report. Abandoned mines fill up with water that leaches toxic heavy metals from inside the abandoned mine, contaminating surrounding streams and groundwater. An earlier GAO report estimates 40 percent of the headwaters of western waterways that communities and farmers and ranchers rely upon for clean water have been affected in this way.
Last week, Udall led other Senators in offering an amendment to the American Energy and Innovation Act , the energy bill pending on the Senate floor, to finally require mining companies to pay a royalty rate and reclamation fee for the ability to extract mineral resources like gold, silver, and copper on public lands. The underlying energy bill would grant mining companies new permit fast-tracking benefits that would limit public input on federal environmental reviews for mining projects for designated “critical minerals.”
Under the Hardrock Royalty and Reclamation Fee Amendment Udall has proposed to the Senate energy bill, future mines would have to pay a royalty, between five and eight percent, for the first time in U.S. history. This would be similar in structure to the royalties that oil and gas and coal producers have long paid for extracting natural resources from public lands. Additionally, the amendment would place a reclamation fee, between one and three percent, on both existing and future mines for a fund dedicated to cleaning up toxic abandoned mine sites across public, state, and tribal lands.
For more information on Udall’s mining reform efforts, please click here.
