Volume 143, No. 19 covering the 1st Session of the 105th Congress (1997 - 1998) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“REFORM OF THE 1872 MINING LAW” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E254-E255 on Feb. 13, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
REFORM OF THE 1872 MINING LAW
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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.
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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