ConservAmerica Applauds Passage of Good Sam Legislation
ConservAmerica President Jeff Kupfer released the following statement today on the House passage of S. 2781, The Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act:
ConservAmerica President Jeff Kupfer released the following statement today on the House passage of S. 2781, The Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act:
WASHINGTON, DC – ConservAmerica today submitted a “friend of the court” brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Guam v. United States arguing in favor of the plaintiff’s efforts to get the U.S. government to pay for the $160 million clean up of a landfill that originated as a Navy waste disposal site.
At issue in the case is whether the U.S. government should be held liable for the cleanup under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act.
This week ConservAmerica hosted a lunch forum for congressional staff on ways to incentivize the voluntary clean-up of orphaned hard rock mines. The briefing featured presentations by key stakeholders, including Tawny Bridgeford, with the National Mining Association; Chris Wood, with Trout Unlimited; Jonathan Wood, with the Property and Environment Research Center; and Steven Cook of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
At issue is the environmental clean-up and restoration of the roughly 500,000 abandoned (non-coal) mines scattered across the United States. Taxpayers pay for remediating the most toxic sites through the Superfund program, but limited federal funding makes the clean-up up of these sites a daunting task.