[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 165 (Thursday, November 5, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7817-S7819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. UDALL (for himself, Mr. Heinrich, Mr. Bennet, Mr. Wyden, 
        and Mr. Markey):
  S. 2254. A bill to modify the requirements applicable to locatable 
minerals on public domain land, and for other purposes; to the 
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
  Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Hardrock 
Mining Reform and Reclamation Act of 2015.
  First, I thank Senator Heinrich, who will be here with me in a 
moment, for working with me on this bill. He is a dedicated 
conservation Senator from the West and really cares about this issue, 
and we have both been working together on this bill. I so much 
appreciate all of his hard work and his commitment to this important 
legislation. I also thank Senator Bennet and Senator Wyden for their 
hard work and support on this bill. I also thank our New Mexico 
colleague, Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, for his efforts on the House 
side.
  We are proposing this bill for one reason: to reform the mining law 
of 1872. It is a matter of simple fairness, it is a matter of common 
sense, and it is a reform that is long overdue.
  The 1872 mining law played a historic role in the settling of the 
West. It encouraged mining for silver, gold, copper, uranium, and other 
minerals on public lands. It helped the West to grow, but there was a 
price--one we are still paying. It did almost nothing to compensate the 
public, it did nothing to protect the environment, and it did nothing 
to require mines to clean up the mess. It did nothing to require those 
mines to clean up the mess. The legacy is clear--thousands of abandoned 
mines, contaminated land, polluted streams, costly cleanup, and 
taxpayers stuck with the bill. We have a 19th-century law which is 
totally inadequate to 21st-century challenges.
  The spill at the Gold King mine earlier this year tells the story. 
With terrible damage in my State, in other States, and in the Navajo 
Nation, this is a disaster on many levels--to our water, our economy, 
and to our culture.
  Mistakes were made at the Gold King mine. We have to do all we can to 
make sure they are not made again and to make sure our communities are 
fairly compensated for losses. That is why Senator Heinrich and I 
introduced the Gold King Mine Spill Recovery Act of 2015.
  The Gold King mine disaster is also a wakeup call. The mine is still 
there; the owners are not. There are up to 500,000 abandoned mines in 
our country. They are a ticking timebomb. They are leaking toxins into 
our rivers and streams in the West and have been for decades. It will 
cost tens of billions of dollars to fix this. The estimates are 
anywhere from $20 billion to $54 billion, with a ``b''--billions. A 
mining royalty will bring fairness to taxpayers and help pay for the 
cleanup.

[[Page S7818]]

  I have pushed for--and will keep pushing for--mining reform, first in 
the House and now in the Senate because I believe in the simple 
principle that the polluter pays. The polluter pays, but under current 
law the mining companies do not pay--not for the minerals they take, 
not for the damage they have done. This cannot continue. They cannot 
continue to reap all the benefits and hundreds of millions of dollars 
while taxpayers continue to shoulder all the burden. This goes against 
every notion of simple fairness. Working Americans know this, middle-
class families know this, and both sides of the aisle know this.
  The 1872 mining law also basically gives away Federal land for $5. 
Less than what a working American pays for lunch, mining companies can 
buy an acre of Federal land if they discover a valuable mineral 
deposit. So there is no surprise here. Hard rock mining companies don't 
want reform. They have had a free ride for a long time--no wonder they 
want to keep it--but it is long past time for that ride to end.
  Coal, oil, and gas companies have paid royalties for many decades. 
Hard rock mining companies, including foreign mining companies, should 
do the same. Our bill will require that they do that. It is not a 
radical idea. The oil industry pays a small fee on every barrel of oil, 
the coal industry pays a small fee on each ton of coal, and the sky has 
not fallen in. And when disasters happen, from oilspills to abandoned 
coal mines, these industries bear some of the cost.
  History may explain why the 1872 law was created, but it is hard to 
see now why it should continue. What began as an effort to settle the 
West has become a gravy train for multibillion-dollar companies and not 
just American companies but foreign ones as well. We know the taxpayers 
are getting shortchanged. We just don't know how much.
  In 2011 I asked the General Accounting Office for the numbers. They 
couldn't say. Not only do the hard rock mining companies not pay, they 
do not disclose, and under current law they do not have to--not how 
much they extract from Federal lands, not where the minerals are sold, 
not the overall value. Yet at the same time, oil, gas, and coal brought 
in $11.4 billion in Federal revenue.
  We need to get this done. We can't keep asking working Americans and 
struggling communities to foot the bill while mining companies reap the 
profits. Let us be clear. The silver and gold on public lands are a 
natural resource. They belong to the American people. They should be an 
investment for public good, not a giveaway for private gain.
  After my father left office after 8 years as Secretary of the 
Interior, he was asked what were his big regrets, and he said mining 
reform was his greatest unfinished business. Fifty years later we still 
need to do this and we still need to do it now. We have an outdated 
law. Special treatment for the profits of large hard rock mining 
companies is not a reason to keep it, at least not to the taxpayers of 
my State.
  It is time to stop giving away the store. It is time to reform the 
mining law of 1872. It is the right thing to do. It is the fair thing 
to do. I urge my colleagues to support this bill and let us get this 
done.
  Mr. President, I was just in a press conference with Senator Heinrich 
and Senator Bennet where we talked, and one of the questions that was 
asked was: How are you working at building bipartisan support and is 
there bipartisan support? I want to say a word on that because we have 
seen very solid bills pass here in Washington with bipartisan support. 
One of the ones I wanted to point out was in 2007 in the House. Nick 
Rahall had a mining reform bill. He had Republican cosponsors by the 
names of Wayne Gilchrest and Representative Christopher Shays--24 
Republicans in the House--and the bill was passed 244 to 166. Paul 
Ryan, who was in my class when I came into Congress in 1998--we arrived 
at the same time and Paul is now the Speaker over in the House--voted 
yes for mining reform back in 2007 on this Rahall bill.
  So I think if you look at the history, this is a bill where we need 
to work with both sides of the aisle, and I hope and wish Congressman 
Ryan--Speaker Ryan--the best and I hope he will join us in this effort 
to reform this long outdated law.
  With that, I see my good friend and partner in this, Senator 
Heinrich, is on the floor, so I yield the floor at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking my colleague 
the senior Senator from New Mexico Tom Udall for the incredible 
leadership he has shown on this issue. I know it is something near and 
dear to his heart and something he absolutely and truly cares about. We 
have had a good team working on this over the course of the last couple 
of months. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado has been a great 
contributor to this effort. Congressman Ben Ray Lujan of northern New 
Mexico has taken a leadership effort on a similar effort in the House, 
and today we are joined by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon on this 
legislation as well.
  As many folks know, in August a large plume of bright orange mine 
waste spilled into the Animas River, which leads into the San Juan, and 
polluted the Four Corners region from Colorado to New Mexico and 
through the Navajo Nation.
  If you take a look at this photo, which was shared with me by the 
president and vice president of the Navajo Nation, this is not what you 
want to see when you look at the river that you take your drinking 
water from or the river that you use for irrigation or the place you go 
fishing or recreate and kayak on. This is not how our mountain streams 
in the Southwest are supposed to look. I think visually this got the 
attention of people all around the country as to the scope and scale of 
this problem.
  After the mine spill, I toured affected communities in New Mexico and 
the Navajo Nation. I met with impacted residents, including farmers in 
Aztec and Shiprock, San Juan County leaders, Navajo Nation President 
Russell Begaye, Vice President Jonathan Nez, and the attorney general, 
Ethel Branch. In the Southwest, water is by far our most precious 
resource, so you can imagine the kind of impact this disaster had on 
our communities.
  My colleagues in the Environment and Public Works Committee and the 
Committee on Indian Affairs have now held hearings to investigate the 
Environmental Protection Agency's actions which led to this spill and 
to seek to bring proper oversight to the Agency's response. Last week, 
the Department of the Interior released a report of its independent 
technical evaluation of the EPA's action. The evaluation found that the 
EPA did not properly appreciate the engineering complexity of trying to 
clean up the Gold King mine and that it could in fact have prevented 
what we see here.
  I share the anger and frustration that not only my colleagues but, 
more importantly, our constituents have expressed over this terrible 
accident. It is why Senator Udall and I have introduced separate pieces 
of legislation specifically to make these communities whole. We need to 
continue to demand the EPA act with urgency to protect the health and 
the safety of the affected communities and to repair the damage 
inflicted on this watershed. That is our first and top priority.
  We are doing a disservice to the American people by not also taking 
action to address the thousands--thousands--of other similarly 
contaminated abandoned mines that literally litter the West and are 
leaking toxins into our watersheds--into the watersheds that provide 
drinking water and irrigation to our communities all across the West.
  There are estimates that 40 percent of western watersheds have been 
polluted by toxic mining waste and that reclaiming and cleaning up 
abandoned mines to make this right is going to cost tens of billions of 
dollars.
  This latest disaster was all too familiar for those of us from the 
Four Corners region and to many people around the West. Back in 1975, 
in an even larger accident than the Gold King blowout, a tailings pile 
near Silverton, CO, spilled 50,000 tons of tailings laden with toxic 
heavy metals into the Animas River Watershed--the watershed that drains 
from Colorado into New Mexico, into the San Juan and through the Navajo 
Nation in Arizona as well.
  In 1979, a breached dam at a uranium mill tailings disposal pond near 
Church

[[Page S7819]]

Rock in New Mexico on the Navajo Nation sent more than 1,000 tons of 
solid radioactive waste and 93 million gallons of acidic liquid into 
the Rio Puerco.
  Disastrous blowouts and spills like these are easy to see. They get 
the media's attention, but the toxins leaking silently out of thousands 
of abandoned hard rock mines are doing even more damage to our 
watersheds each and every day.
  For decades before the spill, the Gold King mine actually leached 
water laced with heavy metals and sulfuric acid into Cement Creek, 
which is a tributary of the Animas. Over the last 10 years, an average 
of 200 gallons of highly polluted water each and every minute, or more 
than 100 million gallons per year, flowed out of this mine and into the 
Animas River via Cement Creek. The Gold King and other abandoned mines 
in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado continue to pollute 
the Animas and the San Juan Watershed as we speak.
  Beyond the immediate cleanup of the Gold King spill, it is high time 
we as a Congress overhaul our abandoned mine cleanup policies to make 
future disasters less likely and to address the thousands and thousands 
of abandoned mines that are polluting our watersheds.
  The Navajo Nation, which was perhaps most affected by the Gold King 
mine blowout, has more than 500 abandoned uranium mines. Last month, I 
met with officials at the Navajo Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation and 
Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Office and learned about their 
efforts to clean up these literally hundreds of sites. I visited a 
large uranium tailings disposal pile in Shiprock--in the town of 
Shiprock--that sits close to the San Juan River.
  If you look at this map, this is the San Juan River. This is the 
community of Shiprock. We have the high school, the fairgrounds, and 
the residential area all around a permanent tailings disposal site--
something that is going to require stewardship for literally hundreds, 
if not thousands, of years.
  Melvin Yazzie, a senior reclamation specialist with the department, 
also took me through an abandoned uranium mine site in the Red Valley 
Chapter of the Northern Navajo Nation. Carrying a Geiger counter, he 
showed me the abandoned mine and a nearby house that was constructed 
using materials contaminated with radioactive materials.
  Here we see Mr. Yazzie with his Geiger counter. This is obviously no 
longer occupied, but it gives us a sense of the impact to members of 
the Navajo Nation, some of whom literally have their homes built with 
the spillover, the rock materials that came out of these mines, and 
live with that irradiation each and every day.
  The Navajo Government is doing its best to address this legacy of 
uranium mining and milling, but they do not have anywhere close to 
enough resources or funding necessary to clean up the waste from 
decades and decades of uranium mining.
  A large reason why the Navajo Nation lacks adequate resources and why 
communities all across Indian Country and the entire West are dealing 
with pollution from abandoned mines and lack resources is that we have 
not updated our Federal laws on hard rock mining in 143 years.
  During the era of manifest destiny, the Federal Government encouraged 
Americans to settle newly acquired lands in the West by passing laws--
laws like the Timber and Stone Act of 1878 and the Desert Land Act of 
1878, laws like the Homestead Act, which my grandparents took advantage 
of. Some of these laws gave away public lands and resources to private 
users with no strings attached and often no price tag attached.
  The General Mining Act of 1872 came along during this era of 
unrestrained western expansion. It allowed individuals and companies to 
claim ownership of minerals in the public domain--minerals owned by us 
as a nation, such as gold, silver, copper, uranium, molybdenum, and 
others--simply by locating a mineral source, staking a claim, and 
paying $5 for an acre of land. Miners did not have to consider 
environmental impacts or make any plans to clean up the waste, which 
has created the pollution and contamination we confront today. This law 
drew thousands of people to the West. My father and my mother's father 
both made a living working in hard rock mining. But shortsighted policy 
also left behind a scarred legacy on our lands.
  Unlike other 19th-century western settlement laws which have long 
since been reformed or replaced, the Mining Act of 1872 remains on the 
books today. While developers of resources such as oil, natural gas, 
and coal all pay royalties to return fair value to taxpayers for our 
public resources, hard rock mining companies still mine publicly owned 
minerals for free--for free--and we still don't have a plan to address 
a century of pollution from abandoned mines.
  We desperately need to bring our mining laws out of the 19th century 
and into the 20th century. That is why I am joining my colleagues--
Senator Udall of New Mexico, Senator Bennet of Colorado, and Senator 
Wyden of Oregon--to introduce legislation to reform our outdated and 
ineffective Federal policy on abandoned mines and on hard rock mining. 
Our legislation will require that reasonable royalties and fees from 
hard rock mining be used to create a dedicated funding stream for 
cleaning up mine waste. A reclamation program will allow States, 
tribes, and nonprofit organizations to collaborate on projects to 
restore fish and wildlife habitat affected by past hard rock mining and 
to repair watersheds that are the very center of our economy in the 
West, the source of our essential agricultural and drinking water 
supply for western communities up and down the spine of the Rockies.
  This legislation will also reform the permitting process for new 
mines. Hard rock mining companies will need to protect water and 
wildlife resources and provide financial assurance that they can 
actually fund reclamation cleanup and restoration efforts after their 
mines close so that in the future we don't have this legacy of 
abandoned hard rock mines.
  These are simply, commonsense reforms--reforms that, frankly, 
Congress should have adopted decades ago.
  I appreciate the value of the hard rock mining industry. My own 
family has benefited from it, and I recognize that the industry 
continues to provide good-paying jobs in States throughout the West. 
Some mining companies are already stepping up to help clean up old 
mining waste sites. I look forward to working with industry 
stakeholders to find practical ways to bring our policies into the 21st 
century. We cannot wait for more disasters like the Gold King mine 
spill for us to act. We cannot continue to do nothing while thousands 
of abandoned hard rock mines drain toxic metals into our rivers, water 
supplies, and our drinking water each and every day. We must come 
together and press forward for pragmatic reforms to our outdated 
Federal hard rock mining laws.
                                 ______