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During a recession, the loss of significant revenue from hardrock mining on federal lands is hardly something the United States can afford, but that is exactly what is threatening to happen.
About $1 billion a year of hardrock minerals are produced from public lands. U.S. citizens directly benefit from this production through severance, income, use and property taxes, high-paying employment and the every-day availability of metals.
Admittedly, the fossil-fuel industries pay 8 to 18.75 percent federal royalties on their public-lands products, and hardrock miners extract metals from these lands without this burden. On the other hand, fossil-fuel producers do not face the same high degree of risk and cost required to discover and develop much-harder-to-find metal ore bodies. For example, while it takes only about 6 weeks to drill and then put into production a coal-bed methane well in Garfield County, it takes five to eight years to discover and then put a small breccia-pipe uranium mine in northern Arizona into production.
Last month, HR 699 was re-introduced into the U.S. House. It proposes changing the 1872 Mining Law by establishing an 8 percent royalty on new mines, and a 4 percent royalty on operating mines. If enacted, the bill will kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
The bill will not establish any new environmental standards that are not already covered by current laws and regulations. It will, however, stop responsible mining on U.S. public lands by financially disabling an industry. Killing off an industry in a time of recession will do nothing, according to recent economic research, but lengthen the current recession. See http://www.jrap-journal.org/pastvolumes/2000/v38/F3831.pdf .
Please contact supporters of HR 699 — the Western Colorado Congress, the Western Organization of Resource Councils and Rep. John Salazar — and let them know that you do not support this bill.
LARRY TURNER
Palisade
One Response to “Changing 1872 law makes no financial sense”
Posted February 26th, 2009 at 6:20 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Yo, Larry - halt that mule train of lies - 1872 was a long time ago. No royalties for publicly-owned minerals extracted from publicly-owned lands? No environmental standards for hard-rock mines? And, the public gets stuck with the tab for little disasters like Red Mountain, Summitville, Questa, and Climax? (Not to mention several thousand other abandoned mines in Colorado alone). Things sure were sweet back in 1872.
Oh - and did I mention severely degraded waterways and the health of everyone who drinks water in the State? Guess who pays for the water treatment & reclamation efforts (and it ain’t the boys “who laid the golden egg”)?
Do your research on this terribly antiquated mining law from the heady days of 1872. It’s now 2009 and several things have changed. Earthworks is a good place to start:
http://www.earthworksaction.org/1872.cfm
Then contact the Salazar Bros. and let them know that YOU DO SUPPORT complete reform of the 1872 Mining Law.
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