Editorial: Cleanup prompts a dispute

Monday, April 3, 2000 | 8:41 a.m.

Abandoned mines in the West pose dangers to both the environment and the public's health and safety. In Nevada alone, state officials estimate there are between 100 and 200 former hard-rock mines that need to be cleaned up. In response, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., has introduced legislation that would give $45 million a year to the Army Corps of Engineers to control the drainage of hazardous chemicals from abandoned mines, which can pollute rivers and contaminate land near residential areas. Gibbons' legislation also identifies six sites in Nevada that should receive a high priority if the bill were to become law.

The Army Corps might not seem initially to be the natural candidate for this job, but the Army Corps does more than just design, build and operate civilian and military public works projects. The Army Corps also has tackled environmental restoration, including the Everglades and wetlands across the nation. In addition, the Army Corps has cleaned hazardous waste sites and even created an experimental program in 1998 to repair environmental damage from hard-rock mining.

Although the intent of Gibbons' legislation is sound, it's not surprising the bill is running into significant opposition, including from the Army Corps. The reason for this is that the Clinton administration and Democrats in Congress believe the hard-rock mining industry should be absorbing the cost of the cleanup, not the public.

Usually it is the polluter who is made to pay, but in this case many of these mines have been abandoned for decades -- if not for more than a century -- making it impossible to track down the culprit. Still, it is unfair to make taxpayers pay for such a cleanup when coal mines have been paying a royalty to the federal government since 1978 to clean up their former mines. These coal mining royalties have resulted in $1.4 billion in restoration projects and $2.5 billion in cleanup projects that are pending. The abandoned hard-rock mines that threaten the environment and public safety should be cleaned up, but the mining industry should foot this bill.