Mining for reform.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Public outrage over legislation that would have allowed mining companies and others to snap up millions of acres of federal land at bargain prices prompted House Republicans to drop the plan from a budget reconciliation bill.

Americans, in particular those who live in the West where most mining claims are located, should be thankful that an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, outdoors groups and Western county commissioners joined forces to block this massive sell-off of public lands, including national parks and wildernesses.

The bill, sponsored by Reps. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., would have lifted an 11-year-old congressional moratorium on mining patents, letting mining companies buy federal lands with valuable mineral deposits for nominal fees. The bill also would have made it easier for these same companies and others to purchase federal lands for economic development entirely unrelated to mining (think anything from ski resorts to mini-malls to scrapyards).

It was an astonishingly bad idea - a piratical raid on precious public assets that its backers falsely promoted in the name of deficit reduction and economic development. But Pombo and Gibbons were correct on one count: the nation's hopelessly outdated mining law needs revision.

When President Ulysses S. Grant signed the law in 1872, it allowed individuals or companies to buy or "patent" mineral-rich lands for $5 an acre. Amazingly, that price was never increased. After a series of obscenely lopsided transactions in Oregon and elsewhere across the West, embarrassed federal lawmakers in 1994 imposed a moratorium on patenting that remains in effect.

A new bipartisan proposal would both update this antiquated law and produce a steady new flow of revenues for the federal government. Sponsored by Reps. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., Chris Shays, R-Conn., and Jay Inslee, D-Wash., House Resolution 3968 would halt the patenting process and replace it with royalties on hardrock mining.

The proposal makes infinitely more sense than the Pombo-Gibbons giveaway. Instead of catering to hardrock-mining companies, it would require them to pay royalties similar to those already paid by the oil, gas, coal-mining and other extractive industries.

A quick glance at the numbers: The U.S. Bureau of Land Management estimates that nearly $820 million in gold, copper, silver and other hardrock minerals were removed from federally owned lands in 2003. The companies that mined and sold those minerals didn't pay the federal government a dime in royalties. If they had been required to pay royalties equivalent to those paid by the coal, oil and natural gas companies, the federal government would have received an estimated $65 million.

Gibbons and Pombo already have signaled that they will make another push for their proposal next year. Their colleagues should drop a stick of pre-emptive dynamite down their legislative shaft by approving reforms that protect, not plunder, public assets and that strengthen, not weaken, the nation's mining law.