The California Gold Rush of the last century is perhaps the most famous example of mining capturing the public’s attention and providing economic benefit to the nation. Often overlooked is the legacy of environmental damage left behind by 19th century mining practices and mining companies that have long since gone out of business or gone bankrupt.
All wealth originates from the earth and mining is an important part of our economy. Nearly every aspect of our modern lives relies on minerals or mineral products as building blocks, from our smartphones to the batteries in electric vehicles. But it’s also incumbent on us to look after our natural inheritance and produce the natural resources we need in the most responsible way.
The Mining Law of 1872 designated federal lands as “free and open” to mining. This practice had already been the federal government’s policy predating the Gold Rush to encourage mining and western migration. The vast majority of those 19th-century mines have long since been exhausted and abandoned and the companies that created them have slipped into history, leaving responsibility for their cleanup to the federal government and a problem of the commons.
Policymakers recognized this deficiency – at least in part – and, since 1977, have required private companies to fund reclamation efforts of abandoned coal mines through a surcharge on their production. Since it was implemented in the 1970s, coal mining reclamation efforts have successfully repurposed previously mined land and restored ecosystems. No such program exists for hardrock mines, though.
This month, a bipartisan group of senators led by Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) introduced legislation to expand reclamation efforts to abandoned hardrock mines.
On July 14, the bipartisan group introduced an amendment to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s infrastructure package that would create a first-of-its-kind $3 billion abandoned hardrock mine reclamation program at the Department of the Interior. The program would specifically target cleanup of abandoned hardrock mines and help address a problem that has scarred western states for decades.
The funds would be used to clean up federal, state, tribal and private land and water resources affected by past mining activities by mining companies that have long gone out of business. Half of the funds would be used by the Department of Interior to address legacy mines on federal lands, and the rest would be made available in the form of grants to states and tribes for remediation projects.
If signed into law, the proposal would help modernize the nation’s outdated hardrock mining laws and signal a renewed commitment to accelerate cleanup of contaminated sites across the West.
The funding component is critical to the success of the program. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates the cost of cleaning the abandoned mines across the West at roughly $35 billion. The amendment authorizes $3 billion, but it falls to the Senate Appropriations Committee to ultimately set the funding level in the annual Interior appropriations bill.
In March 2020, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified approximately 144,000 abandoned hardrock mines across the western United States, with at least 22,500 known to pose an environmental hazard. According to the EPA, tens of thousands of miles of streams across the West fail to meet state water quality standards due to toxic drainage from shuttered historic mines. The Forest Service estimates that between 5,000 and 10,000 miles of streams in the National Forest System are impaired by toxic drainage from old mine sites.
ConservAmerica welcomes the introduction of the bipartisan grant proposal and hopes its passage will signal a renewed commitment to reclaim lands and water polluted by legacy hardrock mining. More needs to be done, though, to address abandoned mines. One of the most impactful changes federal lawmakers could make is an idea that’s universally accepted and has been around for three decades – and doesn’t require a major investment of taxpayer dollars.
The new bipartisan proposal is directionally consistent with Good Samaritan cleanup laws, similar to the Good Samaritan Remediation of Orphaned Hardrock Mines Act championed by then-Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). The Gardner proposal included a crucial additional measure to address a failure in federal environmental regulation that discourages the private sector from joining reclamation efforts. Gardner’s proposal would have exempted third parties, commonly referred to as Good Samaritans – who are not responsible for the environmental pollution – from liability should their cleanup efforts fail to end pollution entirely or should a tragic accident occur.
Third parties who wish to voluntarily clean up abandoned mines can be held liable under the federal Clean Water Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or Superfund, for the entire remediation of a site even though they did not cause the original pollution. This potential liability discourages many well-intentioned groups and private companies from pursuing reclamation projects.
The hardrock mine reclamation program is an important step forward. ConservAmerica urges the full Senate to deliver meaningful resources to the conservation movement by passing this program. Coupling it with a legislative fix to protect good samaritans would further bolster remediation efforts and provide a powerful incentive for more private-sector conservation efforts.
For more about the environmental problem posed by abandoned hardrock mines and the disincentive of federal regulations, check out the 2020 report “Prospecting for Pollution: The Need for Better Incentives to Clean Up Abandoned Mines” by our friends at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC).