Copper pit mine, Copper Mountain, AZ Copyright © 1997, Don Baccus (donb@rational.com)
All images copyright © 1997, Don Baccus
In 1872, Congress passed a law designed to encourage development of our
nation's mineral resources on public lands. The law gives miners
the option of buying, for $2.50/acre, those mining claims which they
choose to actively develop.
Of course, in 1872, $2.50 was worth considerably more than it is today, so many folks are surprised to learn that the figure has never been raised. Yes, it's true - mining companies can buy public land for the same $2.50/acre they had to pay over a century ago. Meanwhile, you and I pay much, much more for the mineral products of those lands.
There have been many attempts to reform this law, but the mining industry has successfully managed to avoid even the most modest of reforms, including proposals to raise the price on these lands to reflect 120 years of inflation!
I think it's obvious to any citizen that this law, unmodified for over
a century, is unfair to the taxpayer. Most are probably unaware of
how pervasive the mining industry is in states like Nevada and Arizona,
where the low price paid for federal land combined with little regulation
has led to wholesale devestation of huge tracts of land. Open pit mining,
with no mitigation, and for many years no attempts to control leachate
runoff, has poisoned waterways and left huge scars on the land. More
recently, cyanide heap-leach gold mining technology, allowing the exploitation
of very low-grade ore, has directly poisoned large numbers of birds and
other wildlife drawn to the ponds containing the cyanide solution.
Even the simple, and seemingly benign, process of staking claims has led
to bird mortality, as miners switched to using
PVC pipe rather than wood many years ago. When uncapped, these pipes
attract cavity-using birds, which are unable to climb back out due to the
smoothness of the interior of the pipe.
While our modern society clearly needs minerals, it also seems clear that taxpayers should be fairly reimbursed for the value of natural resources exploited by private industry, and that such exploitation should be undertaken using the most benign technology available.
Yet mining interests have fought the simplest of regulation, and for years refused to voluntarily take simple steps such as to quit using uncapped PVC pipe to stake claims (this practice is no longer legal in Oregon).
Some states have taken the lead by passing fairly tough mining reform laws,
including my home state of Oregon and, much more importantly (due to the
scale of mining operations present there), Montana. However, as of this
writing (December, 1997) the root legislation that favors mining interests,
the 1872 law with its ridiculously low $2.50/acre patent fee, has proven
immune to reform.