Please call your congressperson immediately and ask them not to support Pombo's bill that will ** sell millions of acres of public land to mining companies**
congress contact:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/homehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9991573/Controversial mining plan nears House vote
Debate centers on what federal lands would be sold, and at what price
Environment slide shows ARCHIVE
Updated: 11:17 a.m. ET Nov. 10, 2005
WASHINGTON - Mining industry critics braced for a House vote on a budget bill that includes a provision that could allow the sales of millions of acres of public lands.
The provision would overturn a congressional ban on letting mineral companies and individuals buy public lands at cheap prices if they hold mineral deposits.
“If this provision became law, it could literally lead to the privatization of millions of acres of public land, including national park and national forestland,” said Dave Alberswerth, public lands director for The Wilderness Society.
A vote on the overall bill could come as early as Thursday.
Congress has decided each year since 1994 to prohibit mining companies from exploiting an obscure part of the 1872 mining law that allows businesses and individuals to “patent,” or buy, some of the nation’s most scenic lands at 19th century prices — just $2.50 to $5 per acre. It gives them absolute title, including mineral rights, to the properties.
The Interior Department over the past decade has approved slightly more than half of the 405 patent applications it received before 1994, and is still processing the final 50.
Mineral value wouldn't count
House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., and other committee members want to lift the ban preventing anyone from applying for a new patent application. They propose raising the price to $1,000 per acre or “fair market value,” whichever is more. That doesn’t take into account the value of the minerals the lands might contain.
Until now, companies have had to convince the Interior Department that the land has a valuable mineral deposit and it can be mined at a profit. Department officials say companies typically spend about $10,000 to $15,000 per acre trying to document that it is economically viable to mine there.
Once a patent is granted, the law does not let the government challenge a company if it drops its plan to mine at a site and resell the property as real estate.
Most of the available land that could be bought is managed by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. Officials there say they received 320,000 mining claims this year, a huge amount driven by high gold prices. The average size mining claim is on 20 acres.
That adds up to 6.4 million acres of BLM land — generally remote acreage used for grazing, recreation and a multitude of other purposes — that could be sold if it were “patented.”
Some claims in protected areas
Though the bill exempts national parks, monuments and wilderness areas, The Wilderness Society says lands with existing mining claims in national parks could still be sold. There are 900 such mining claims, including 700 in California; the rest are mostly in Alaska.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the changes in law could raise several hundred million dollars, including $100 million that could be spent over the next 10 years for mining cleanups and schools that offer training in petroleum, mining or mineral engineering.
The new language lowers the threshold for obtaining a permit and generally mirrors what the National Mining Association advocated. Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the trade group, said those changes would help boost rural Western economies by drawing investment “in areas where mining companies are clearly the high-wage employers.”
Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., chairman of the House Resources energy and mineral resources subcommittee, said the law needed to be changed because “continuously suspending the patent process is not a solution, it is merely a temporary fix.”
“Patenting and purchase of lands is absolutely vital to the health of Nevada’s rural communities because it expands the tax base of the local government, which in turn funds schools, emergency services and other infrastructure,” he said.
However, Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the committee, said the mining provision “would result in a blazing fire sale of federal lands” to U.S. and international companies.
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