The fine estates and lavish mansions of old Spokane are one legacy of mining in Washington state, when 19th-century fortunes were made in minerals, lumber and railroads.

Another, more toxic mining legacy can be found northwest of Spokane on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

The Midnite Mine is an inactive uranium mine about an hour’s drive from Colville. It is a stewpot of hazardous pollution including cadmium, chromium and uranium, in surface and groundwater. Some 33 million tons of radioactive waste rock and ore remain at this 350-acre site above the Spokane River.

The Midnite Mine site has a long, complicated history. But the bottom line is that when mine cleanup costs approached $200 million, the Environmental Protection Agency had to sue Newmont, the liable company, to hold it accountable for its share of cleanup. Americans should learn from that history.

Luckily, America has an opportunity right now to make sure that mining companies pay to clean up their own messes, and not taxpayers.

All of us depend on minerals every day. And some of those minerals must be mined. The problem is when the costs of mining – which include containing and cleaning up pollution – are borne not by the companies that directly profit from mining, but get foisted on people like you and me.

This is a big problem because, according to the EPA, hard-rock mining is the No. 1 source of toxic releases in the United States. The massive cleanup effort in Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Basin is a textbook example. Taxpayers are now on the hook for $25 billion to $50 billion in pollution cleanup projects nationwide, and that total is growing!

As a former forest supervisor for the U.S. Forest Service, I learned firsthand that it is far better to prevent a mess than to try to clean it up after the fact. EPA has had little choice in the matter because the agency (meaning us taxpayers) inherits messes after they’re listed as a Superfund site.

But finally, there is good news. Instead of trying to track down errant polluters after they’ve made their fortunes and left us to clean up the pollution, EPA is proposing new Superfund rules that require companies to prove that they have adequate mine cleanup funds, up front, not after they cut and run. The draft rules were released by the EPA for public review on Dec. 2.

It’s essentially a damage deposit like a landlord requires before renting an apartment. But we’re talking about protecting something far more precious and irreplaceable: America’s clean water.

If there is no problem and the mine completes cleanup, great. If there is a problem, however, the company is held responsible to its promises to the public and to its shareholders.

Far, far too often, mining companies make big promises about preventing or cleaning up pollution, only to file bankruptcy when the bill comes due. Ironically, many of these companies aren’t even American companies, but multinational corporations happy to take advantage of America’s relatively lax mining laws.

The mining industry is particularly prone to this kind of problem, since the industry is subject to sudden market fluctuations. Time and again, lingering pollution is a consequence of boom-and-bust cycles.

These welcome draft rules can help fix this problem, better protect public health, and hold corporations accountable. The key to their success will be requiring financial assurances that are backed by hard assets, not just a company promise.

Let’s ensure we comment in support of strong, meaningful rules. We need to insist that the mining industry live by the rules we learned in kindergarten: You make the mess, you clean it up.

Gloria Flora is the executive director of Sustainable Obtainable Solutions and a former U.S. Forest Service supervisor. She lives near Colville.