Mining Reform Efforts Heat Up

Conflicts between mining and recreation are ramping up, highlighting the need to bring mining laws into the 21st century to both protect outdoor recreation and to make mining more predictable and responsible in the transition to renewable energy.

You might wonder what mining has to do with outdoor recreation. In the last few years, there have been a number of high-profile conflicts between mining leases and outdoor recreation gems. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, Oak Flat in Arizona, and the South Fork Salmon River in Idaho have all been threatened by mining or impacted by mining waste in recent years.

The law governing hardrock mining on the vast majority of America’s public lands is more than 150 years old, a relic from a time when most modern mining equipment did not exist and the idea of managing public land for outdoor recreation or conservation values was many decades away. This archaic law has caused many problems—it prioritizes mining above all other uses, and has few safeguards for pollution, which has contaminated up to 40% of watersheds in the west. Current mining laws leave advocates and Tribes little recourse to object to ill-placed mines, and leave agencies with little discretion to balance mining with recreation access and other public land values. In the transition to renewable energy, it is important that the mining process is transparent, protects the safety and health of local communities, and allows land managers to protect special places on public lands.

On Tuesday, the Senate will hear two very different mining reform bills. The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act (S. 1281 & H.R. 2925) would allow for mining companies to dump toxic waste on public lands, even when they have found no valuable critical minerals to mine. In practice, it is a giveaway to mining companies, granting them authority to permanently occupy federal lands, and potentially locking out other uses from renewable energy to outdoor recreation. Outdoor Alliance and our partners oppose this bill, which would expand where and when mining companies are allowed to pollute. This is not the direction mining reform needs to be going.

The Senate will also have a hearing on Senator Heinrich Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act (CEMRA), which offers some much-needed updates to mining law. It would protect special places from hardrock mining and establish a cleanup program that would alleviate pollution and waste from abandoned mines. The House bill also would provide a fairer return to taxpayers from mining on public lands.

Click to read our full letter to the House Natural Resources subcommittee.

"Inappropriately sited mines and legacy mining pollution takes an inordinate toll on clean water, Tribes, local communities, conservation values, and outdoor recreation,” said Louis Geltman, Policy Director at Outdoor Alliance. “A 150-year-old law is no way to govern such a high-impact use of our public lands and waters, particularly when we will need to do more mining to meet the needs of a clean energy transition. The Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act will help to protect the myriad values our public lands and waters provide and help to reduce conflict so that appropriately sited and managed mining projects can proceed with greater certainty."

Outdoor recreationists have a key role to play in supporting good mining reform policy and preventing giveaways to the mining industry. Outdoor Alliance submitted a letter to lawmakers for the hearing, which you can read here or by clicking on the letter at right. You can help by writing a short letter to your lawmakers: