[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 24 (Thursday, February 14, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Page S785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. MURKOWSKI:
  S. 366. A bill to amend the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 
to require the Bureau of Land Management to provide a claimant of a 
small miner waiver from claim maintenance fees with a period of 60 days 
after written receipt of 1 or more defects is provided to the claimant 
by registered mail to cure the 1 or more defects or pay the claim 
maintenance fee, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and 
Natural Resources.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce legislation 
to clarify Federal mining law and remedy a problem that has arisen from 
the extension process for ``small'' miner mineral claims.
  Under revisions to the Federal Mining Law of 1872, 30 U.S.C. 28(f), 
holders of unpatented mineral claims must pay a claim maintenance fee 
originally set at $100 per claim by a deadline, set by regulation, of 
September 1st each year. Since 2004 that fee has risen. But Congress 
also has provided a claim maintenance fee waiver for ``small'' miners, 
those who hold 10 or fewer claims, that they do not have to submit the 
fee, but that they must file to renew their claims and submit an 
affidavit of annual labor, work conducted on the claim, each year, 
certifying that they had performed more than $100 of work on the claim 
in the preceding year, 30 U.S.C. 28f(d)(1). The waiver provision 
further states: ``If a small miner waiver application is determined to 
be defective for any reason, the claimant shall have a period of 60 
days after receipt of written notification of the defect or defects by 
the Bureau of Land Management to: cure such defect or defects or pay 
the $100 claim maintenance fee due for such a period.''
  Since past revisions of the law, there have been a series of 
incidents where miners have argued that they submitted their 
applications and affidavits of annual labor in a timely manner, but due 
to clerical error by BLM staff, mailing delays or for unexplained 
reasons, the applications or documents were not recorded as having been 
received in a timely fashion. In that case BLM has terminated the 
claims, deeming them null and void. While mining claim holders have 
argued that the law provides them time to cure claim defects, BLM has 
argued that the cure only applies when applications or fees have been 
received in a timely manner. Thus, there is no administrative remedy 
for miners who believe that clerical errors by BLM or mail issues 
resulted in loss or the late recording of claim extension applications 
and paperwork.
  There have been a number of cases where Congress has been asked to 
override BLM determinations and reinstate mining claims simply because 
of the disputes over whether the claims had been filed in a timely 
manner. Congress in 2003 reinstated such claims in a previous Alaska 
case. Claims in two other incidents were reinstated following a U.S. 
District Court case in the 10th Circuit first in 2009 in the case of 
Miller v. United States and secondly earlier this year in a second 
Alaska case. Legislation to correct the provision to prevent this 
problem in the future actually cleared the Senate in 2007, but did not 
ultimately become law.
  In the past two Congresses I have introduced legislation intended to 
short circuit continued litigation and pleas for claim reinstatement by 
clarifying the intent of Congress that miners do have to be informed 
that their claims are in jeopardy of being voided and given 60 days 
notice to cure defects, including giving them time to submit their 
applications and to submit affidavits of annual labor, should their 
submittals not be received and processed by BLM officials on time. If 
all defects are not cured within 60 days, the obvious intent of 
Congress in passing the original act, then claims still are subject to 
voidance. But this administration has opposed the legislation arguing 
that it would be too expensive to notify all small miners who fail to 
file their small miner waiver documents on time and giving them time to 
solve the defect prior to the loss of their claims. It has even been 
suggested that giving small miners simple due process would just 
encourage miners to ignore the deadline for filing for their fee 
waivers.
  I find the cost complaint unpersuasive. Many Federal departments and 
agencies, the Federal Communication Commission, as one example, 
routinely sends out notices on permit and license applications. The FCC 
sends out hundreds of thousands of such notices to Americans who have 
small radio licenses expiring yearly, warning them that they need to 
file applications for license renewal. The Bureau of Land Management 
certainly should be able to afford a few hundred 50-cent stamps to 
perform a similar service. Given the value of claims placed at risk and 
the bother, inconvenience and fear of loss of claims, it is highly 
unlikely that miners would avoid filing their waiver paperwork on time 
just because a notification process was clearly in place before claims 
could be terminated.
  So today I reintroduce legislation to solve the notification issue 
and include language to remedy an injustice to one of my constituents 
who has lost his rights to nine mineral claims on the Kenai Peninsula, 
near Hope, Alaska. The transition language would reinstate claims for 
Mr. John Trautner, who has lost title to claims that he had held from 
1982 to 2004. Mr. Trautner suffered this loss even though he had a 
consistent record of having paid the annual labor assessment fee for 
the previous 22 years. The local BLM office did have a time-date-
stamped record that the maintenance fee waiver certification form had 
been filed weeks before the deadline but just not a record that the 
affidavit of annual labor had arrived when he dropped it office in the 
Anchorage office at the same time.
  This legislation, supported in the past by the Alaska Miners 
Association, will clarify that small miners do have a right to simple 
due process to be able to have a chance to file their small miner 
waiver applications in the event of mistakes in processing, rather than 
immediately lose their rights to patented mining claims without 
effective appeal or recourse. I appreciate that the Justice Department 
and BLM Jan. 22, 2013 reinstated claims owned by Alaskans Don and Judy 
Mullikins of Nome, finally reversing a decision that they should lose 
their claims following a 2009 application filing incident. But the 
legal expense, bother and uncertainty that the Mullikins went through 
in getting their claims reinstated are clear reasons why Congress 
should clarify past changes to the small miner waiver provision and 
permit claims to be retained in the event of clerical errors or honest 
mistakes by claim holders in missing the deadline for filings. Such a 
change would simply provide justice for small miners.
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