This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Denver • Democrats in the U.S. Senate on Thursday proposed new fees for mines on federal land to help pay for cleaning up sites such as Colorado's inactive Gold King Mine, where 3 million gallons of wastewater spilled into rivers that run through three states.
The senators want to revise an 1872 federal law to include a reclamation fee on all hard rock mines, new and existing. Hard rock mining general includes gold, silver, copper and other minerals.
The reclamation fee would raise about $100 million a year, but total cleanup costs will be in the tens of billions of dollars for thousands of sites, they said.
Money would be distributed to federal, state and tribal agencies for cleanup projects but remain distinct from the Superfund program that pays to remediate a range of toxic waste sites including mines.
The lawmakers also proposed a separate royalty on minerals extracted from new mines on federal land that would go into the cleanup fund. The lawmakers said they don't know how much money it would generate because mining companies currently aren't required to report their production.
The bill is the latest of several proposals prompted by the Aug. 5 spill at the Gold King mine. A cleanup crew supervised by the Environmental Protection Agency inadvertently triggered the release of water tainted with heavy metals. Rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah were polluted.
The Democrats' bill would revise the 1872 law that critics say is antiquated and doesn't require enough from mining companies in exchange for access to valuable minerals on public land. The law currently doesn't require royalties for hard rock mining.
"We're still basically giving away land to multinational mining corporations," said New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, one of the sponsors. "Coal, oil and gas companies have paid royalties for many decades. Hard rock mining companies should do the same."
The environmental group Earthworks, which monitors mining and energy development, said an overhaul of the mining bill is long overdue.
"If this bill had been law before the Gold King Mine waste disaster, the Animas River might never have been polluted, and downstream communities in Colorado and New Mexico might never have suffered," said Jennifer Krill, Earthworks executive director.
National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich said his group doesn't oppose a small royalty if Congress will streamline the process for getting mining permits and pass a "Good Samaritan" bill.
The provision would encourage third parties to clean up old mines by limiting their liability for accidental environmental damage.
Republicans proposed a Good Samaritan bill earlier this week in response to the Gold King spill, and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., is drafting similar legislation. Several previous attempts have failed because of objections to various provisions by either the industry or environmental groups.
Bennet is a sponsor of the hard rock mining bill as well. Other backers include Sens. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward Markey of Massachusetts. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., is sponsoring similar legislation in the House.