The Nation - Mining overhaul has prospects - The House votes to add environmental protections as well as royalties on minerals taken from public land.
WASHINGTON — When a law was passed in 1872 to let miners extract minerals virtually for free from federal lands, it was meant to promote settlement of the West.
With that goal long since accomplished, the House voted 244-166 on Thursday to overhaul the 135-year-old law, adding protections for the environment and, for the first time, requiring miners to pay royalties for the gold, silver, copper, uranium and other minerals they extract from public lands.
The White House has threatened to veto the bill but also signaled willingness to negotiate. Driven by worries that mines are damaging the environment and complaints that private companies are shortchanging the government, the decades-old efforts to overhaul the law signed by Ulysses S. Grant have their best prospects in years for success.
"Times have changed," said Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). "Today's West now depends on the health as well as the conservation of our fragile environment, as much as it relies on mining."
The proposed rewrite of the mining law underscores the political change in the Capitol since Democrats took control of Congress last year. Just two years ago, environmentalists were on the defensive, fighting a bid in the Republican-led Congress to let mining companies buy federal land with valuable mineral deposits for nominal fees.
Unsuccessful efforts were made to overhaul the law in the 1970s and in 1994.
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Chance for compromise?
The bill's fate will rest heavily on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a gold miner's son from the biggest gold-mining state. He opposes a royalty on operators of existing hard-rock mines but has hinted he might allow royalties on new operations as a way to compromise on a priority of environmental groups, an important Democratic constituency.
After the vote, Reid said, "While I cannot support many of the provisions in the House bill, I believe that the opportunity still exists for common-sense reform."
Efforts to forge a compromise could be aided by the fact that the bill's leading champion in the House is Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), the pro-mining chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. He has pushed to revamp the law, "the Jurassic Park of all federal laws" as he called it, for two decades. "I think all sides want finality," he said.
