Financial Costs to Mining History
The General Mining Law of 1872
You wouldn't think a law written in 1872 would govern mining practices today, but it does. Unlike Indiana, where almost all land is privately owned, most Western states have a significant portion of federally owned land. Many mining operations take place on federal land. Back in 1872, you only needed to pay $5.00 per acre to mine on federal land. That is the equivalent of paying about $92.00 today. That’s pretty cheap.
The most outrageous part about this mining law is that mining companies still pay the same price today for mining on federal land as they did back in 1872: $5 an acre. This hasn’t changed in the past 140 years because lobbying and political backtracking keeps preventing this change – and yes, this debate has been going on for the past 100 years or so. In 2007, democrats in Congress have been considering, trying to get mining companies to pay federal royalties of up to 8% for gold, silver, and other minerals mined on public lands. In 2009, President Obama proposed another set of changes including a not-less-than 5% gross royalty and increased taxes and fees for mining on Federal Land. He also proposed setting up a fund for abandoned mine clean-up.
As we read in our textbook, there is a long history of abandoned mines in the Western U.S. These mines continue to cause acid mine drainage and many have been declared by the U.S. EPA as hazardous and designated as “Superfund” sites. The Superfund program is a federal, tax-payer funded program whose main purpose is to clean up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. This means that these abandoned mines which produce hazardous waste must be cleaned up using our tax dollars. Yes, that means the companies which paid only $5.00 an acre to use our public lands have no liability in cleaning up the pollution they caused. They can simply claim bankruptcy to avoid paying anything more to the federal government than $5.00 per acre. Instead, we pay for it. In 2010, President Obama upset many environmentalists and residence of our Western States who live with acid mine drainage when he backtracked on his proposed changes. For now it seems, that there is no long-term plan for helping to alleviate the financial burden to tax payers for these historical environmental problems. (The links in this section are not required reading.)
If you are interested in the debate, please see these two articles. (They are not required reading.)
- More than a century of mining has left the West deeply scarred
- Too often, government is left with the cleanup costs
Gold Mining in Yellowstone?
Yellowstone National Park is part of a caldera, a form of volcano (as we learned in the Volcanoes Module). This volcanic and magmatic activity has deposited numerous mineral resources adjacent to the park. A contentious issue among environmentalists is allowing gold and platinum mining to occur adjacent to the National Park land and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. President Clinton denied the rights to develop adjacent to the park; however, mining companies have continued to lobby for a change in the law.
Similar debates have cropped up over oil exploration on public lands in the North Slope of Alaska and the west coast of Florida. (The links in this box are not required reading.)
Gibbon-River-Yellowstone.jpg)
A pristine stream in Yellowstone National Park, the Gibbon River, Wyoming, 2006. (Photo Credit: USGS)