US lawmakers introduce Bill to reform 142-year-old mining law – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – July 11, 2014)

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TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Twenty US legislators had this week introduced a Bill in the House of Representatives looking for reforms to the General Mining Act of 1872, proposing higher royalties for mining companies.

The Bill suggests that mining companies be charged a royalty of 8% on new mines and 4% on existing properties for mining on public land.

The Bill was introduced on Thursday by the US House of Representatives natural resources committee member Peter DeFazio and subcommittee on public lands and environmental regulation member Raul Grijalva.

For over 140 years, the federal government has allowed mining companies to extract hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of valuable publically owned minerals from public lands without paying American taxpayers a single dime.

The 1872 Mining Law was signed into law by President Ulysses Grant. Originally intended to spur the nation’s westward expansion, the nineteenth-century statute still governs the extraction of hard-rock minerals on over 350-million acres of public lands in the western US.

“Adding insult to injury, the current law has allowed these mining companies – many of them foreign owned – to carve up our lands and abandon the toxic, hazardous mess for taxpayers to clean up. My legislation will ensure the mining industry pays its fair share, meets modern environmental standards and addresses its legacy of contamination throughout the west,” DeFazio said.

The congressional representatives proposed to use the money raised through royalties to clean up abandoned hard-rock mine lands, which was estimated to cost about $72-billion.

A new report released by the committee’s Democrats estimated that the owners of 46 of the nation’s top-producing hard-rock mines would have paid $380-million in royalties in 2012 and 2013, had the DeFazio legislation been law.

The study held that the 46 mines produced minerals worth about $9.6-billion in the last two years from federally controlled land, without paying any royalties. Twenty-one of these mines are foreign owned.

GREEN APPLAUSE

The Bill was welcomed by several environment-focused lobby groups.

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