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Mining Claims on Western Public Lands
If someone suggested that the United States give away valuable public resources – such as gold and uranium and the land on which they sit – for less than the price of a ticket to Disney World, along with enormous tax breaks and no requirement that they clean up the mess they leave behind after they extract these precious metals, what would you say?
Though it sounds ludicrous, this is exactly what our country has been doing since 1892. That’s when the infamous 1892 Mining Law was passed, allowing exactly the process described above. For just $1 per acre, anyone – including foreign companies – can stake a claim on U.S. public lands for mining purposes. They can then extract the precious metals below, receive a tax break for up to 22 percent of the value of those metals, pay no royalties to the U.S. government whatsoever, and pay nothing toward the cost of cleaning up after themselves, even though metals mining is the leading source of toxic pollution in this country.
Who pays the cost for clean up? The American public.
Americans also pay a price with their health. Uranium mining has been linked to lung cancer and other health problems, especially for the Navajo Indians who live near the mines. Metal mines are often located out of public view, so few people see the environmental devastation that they cause. Yet mining claims are up nearly 50 percent since 2002, as U.S. and foreign companies take advantage of the rising price of metals. Over the past five years, they’ve claimed roughly 2.3 million acres of Western public lands – for as little as $1 per acre.
Legislation to address some of these problems has been introduced, but environmentalists have been trying unsuccessfully for decades to reform the 1892 Mining Law. The current proposed legislation would create a cleanup fund for abandoned mines and require mining companies to pay into it. It would also make some public lands off limits to mining. And it would require companies to pay an 8 percent royalty for metals they extract.
For more information about this issue, go to http://www.ewg.org/sites/mining_google/US/.
To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org
