House approves rewrite of 135-year-old mining law

For two decades, efforts to reform the antiquated 1872 Mining Law led to bitter debate, pitting environmentalists against miners who wanted to extract valuable minerals from federal lands.

Laura Skaer hears more conciliatory deliberations from the latest go-around.

“I think the opportunity to pass a law is better now than it’s been in the last 20 years,” said Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association, a Spokane-based trade group.

Skaer’s constituents – who range from small prospectors to large corporations – disagree with many of the provisions in a sweeping rewrite of the law passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. But they’re willing to pay some type of royalty on the minerals they take. And they’re motivated to get a mining bill passed before President Bush leaves office.

Since January, Skaer has made 10 trips to Washington, D.C., testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee and lobbying congressional members on the industry’s viewpoint. She’s not the only Inland Northwest resident involved in the debate.

Last summer, Michael Marchand, chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation’s business council, also testified before the House committee. The tribe’s ancestral lands in northeastern Washington are scattered with low-grade gold deposits.

“Our right to hunt and fish up there gets diminished every time there’s mineral development,” said Marchand, who supports language in the House bill allowing tribes to petition for the withdrawal of culturally significant federal lands from mining activity.

How royalties are calculated, and the potential withdrawal of lands from mineral development, are key areas for debate as the bill moves through the Senate.

The House version would impose a royalty of 4 percent on existing hard-rock mining operations and 8 percent on gross revenues on new operations. The mining industry is lobbying for a 5 percent royalty after certain types of expenses are deducted.

“It’s reasonable to pay some type of royalty,” said Fred Brackebusch, the owner of New Jersey Mining Co. in Kellogg.

Most of the region’s large silver mines are located on private lands, and wouldn’t be subjected to the royalty payments. But the New Jersey Mining Co. has several small mining claims on Forest Service land, including the Silver Strand Mine about 20 miles northeast of Coeur d’Alene. The company hopes to open the mine next year.

Royalties would help reimburse the Forest Service for the cost of permitting new mines, Brackebusch said. He’d prefer to pay royalties after smelter costs have been deducted, however. That’s the arrangement that New Jersey Mining uses to lease a small gold operation near Murray, Idaho.

“We would like to keep the industry viable,” Brackebusch said, “and have a clear-cut law that we can count on.”

Royalties “need to take into the account the cost of taking a raw piece of ore out of the ground, and going through the many steps of processing the ore to extract the valuable metals,” said Debbie Struhsacker, a Reno-based mining consultant and lobbyist.

When federal lands can be withdrawn from mineral development is also a controversial topic.

“A lot has changed in the West. It’s not just an extraction economy anymore – you have jobs based on tourism and recreation,” said Lauren Pagel, a spokeswoman for Earthworks, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental firm. “We feel like there are situations where the federal government should be able to deny a mine on public land if the mine would impact water quality or recreation.”

Tribal governments pushed for the provision allowing a process for withdrawing lands of cultural or religious significance to Native Americans. Marchand noted that mining has played a contentious role in the tribe’s history.

The Colville Reservation was cut in half in the late 1800s, when gold was discovered in the northern portion. More recently, members of the tribe sued Teck Cominco, a Canadian mining firm, over the cleanup of heavy metals in Lake Roosevelt.

The tribe isn’t unilaterally opposed to mining, according to Marchand. Tribal officials just want a bigger say in mining projects that would affect them, he said.

Skaer said she doesn’t object to withdrawing federal land from mineral development, if there’s a public process for demonstrating that the land is more valuable for other uses.

But people have to keep in mind that mines can’t be moved, she said.

“Economically viable mineral deposits are rare and hard to find,” Skaer said, “and they are where God put them.”