[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 19 (Thursday, February 13, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E254-E255]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REFORM OF THE 1872 MINING LAW

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, February 13, 1997

  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, in the long and expensive 
history of corporate welfare, no law has evaded reform more 
successfully than the mining law of 1872. For 125 years, since the 
administration of Ulysses S. Grant, this law has governed hard rock 
mining in America. And throughout those 125 years, as billions of 
dollars in public gold, silver, and other valuable resources have been 
mined, the taxpayers have not received one dime in royalties.

[[Page E255]]

  We don't treat any other resource that way--not coal, not water, not 
oil or gas. No State allows mining on its land without some royalty. No 
private landowner tolerates it. No foreign nation. ``Only in America,'' 
as they say, would we give away billions of dollars in gold and ask 
nothing for the taxpayers who own it.
  But it isn't fair to say we get nothing from the mining activity. The 
mining industry has left behind a legacy of environmental destruction--
including hundreds of thousands of abandoned, toxic and contaminated 
minesites, that threaten our environment, our public health and our 
public lands and wildlife.
  Fifty-nine sites on the Superfund list are the result of hardrock 
mining. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, mine wastes 
have polluted more than 12,000 miles of our Nation's waterways and 
180,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs. At least 50 billion tons of 
untreated, unreclaimed mining wastes--including arsenic, cadmium, 
copper, cyanide, iron, lead, mercury, sulphur, and zinc-contaminate 
public and private lands. The costs of clean-up is in the tens of 
billions of dollars.
  Those of us who represent western States know there are special 
problems resulting from past mining activity.
  In California, the inactive Iron Mountain mine discharges one-fourth 
of the entire national discharge of copper and zinc to surface waters 
from industrial and municipal sources, according to the EPA. The city 
of Redding can no longer use the Sacramento River for drinking water 
because of the contamination levels.
  In Colorado, a father and son were riding their motorbikes cross-
county when they plunged into an unmarked abandoned mine. The son was 
killed.
  In Nevada, long-abandoned Comstock Lode gold and silver mines are 
leaching heavy metals into the Carson River, not far from Lake Tahoe.
  In Montana, windblown heavy metal particulates from old mine tailings 
forced official to replace high-school baseball fields around Butte.
  In Idaho, EPA found lead levels in the area downwind from the 
abandoned Bunker Hill silver mine to be 30 times higher than the 
maximum levels deemed ``safe.'' Nearly all of the 179 children living 
within 1 mile of the site have potentially brain-impairing lead levels 
in their blood.
  This is the legacy--not only of an antiquated mining program that let 
mining companies run amok, but of a Congress that has ignored the 
mounting cost to taxpayers, to the environment, and to public health. 
It has to end.
  The bills Senator Dale Bumpers and I are introducing today will raise 
$1.5 billion directly from the industry that has profited from the 
mining program in order to clean-up the legacy of the mining program. 
Our bills will: Impose a 5-percent net smelter return royalty on all 
hard rock minerals mined from public lands to that taxpayers will--
finally--receive a fair return on the extraction of hard rock minerals 
from public lands; impose a reclamation fee on all hard rock minerals 
mined from lands patented under the 1872 mining law; and close the 
depletion allowance loophole so that mining operators can no longer 
take a tax credit for depleting taxpayers' mineral wealth.
  Overhaul of the mining law is long overdue. Powerful special 
interests, with the help of a few members of Congress, have literally 
lined their pockets with gold. And the taxpayer and the environment 
have paid the price. These bills will finally begin to give a fair 
return to the taxpayer and restore despoiled public lands.
  Why might we succeed in 1997 were we have failed before? Because, I 
believe, the public is demanding an end to the multi-billion dollar 
orgy of corporate welfare that swells our deficit every year. Because 
the Clinton administration has targeted the mining program for reform 
in its 1998 budget. Because we are winning bipartisan support for 
ending outdated and expensive Federal subsidies. And because, even in 
the mining States of the West, four out of five Americans support 
mining reform.
  It is a disgrace that on the eve of the 21st century, taxpayers and 
the environment continue to be ripped off by an antiquated law from the 
19th century. If Congress is serious about reducing wasteful and 
unjustified corporate welfare, we should begin by reforming the mining 
law of 1872.

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