A golden moment to overhaul mining law

Thursday, May 10, 2007 | 7:25 a.m.

WASHINGTON - One of the long-running laws of the West may be headed for the most substantial overhaul in its history.

Mining reform advocates see their best chance in a decade to amend the 1872 Mining Law, which governs Nevada's No. 2 industry.

The reformers are picking up support from unlikely places, including from the mining industry, from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has blocked past reform efforts, and from jewelers who hope to avoid having their products tarnished with a "guilt gold" label similar to bad descriptions that have hit the diamond industry.

Jane Danowitz, director of the recently launched Pew Campaign on Responsible Mining, said : "You now have hunters and anglers, jewelers - Tiffany's - a variety of taxpayer groups who have come together, who have said, the time is now . We think this is the best opportunity the country has had in a decade to reform the law."

This morning, longtime mining critic Rep. Nick Rahall II, D-W.Va., is to introduce legislation to change the law on its 135th anniversary. Tiffany's chief executive will be by his side.

Although details of the bill have not been made public, all sides were expecting at least some elements of Rahall's past attempts to regulate an industry that produces more gold in Nevada than anywhere else in the nation, but has also left the state a hot spot for toxic mercury pollution.

Reid, the son of a hard-rock miner who has received $100,000 in mining industry contributions over the years, said that after discussions with Rahall last week he was convinced "we can work through it."

Environmentalists have long pushed to extract royalty payments from the industry, much as oil and gas companies pay the government for operations on public lands.

Reformers also want new environmental restrictions on where and how mines operate, essentially by doing away with the preference mining enjoys as the best use of public lands.

The mining industry agrees with some of the proposed changes. It agrees that mines should pay for using public lands and that regulations should be instituted so abandoned mines no longer degrade the environment.

But as always, the details will be important. The industry wants certainty that once it gets a green light to mine, it won't face costly hurdles down the road.

"There's no serious doubt in anyone's mind the law needs to be updated in light of modern circumstances," said Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association. "As always the question will be where to place the emphasis in reform. There are clearly areas where our interests overlap and see common ground."

Nevada's Republican Sen. John Ensign said legislation could be "good for the industry and good for our state" - particularly if compensation revenue is reinvested in rural Nevada, which often suffers the boom and bust mining cycle.

Nevada's Reps. Jon Porter and Shelley Berkley say they are willing to discuss revising the law.

Republicans lost a chance to do so when they controlled Congress, after a failed plan launched by then-Rep. Jim Gibbons, now Nevada's governor, that even the industry thought was excessive. It would have reversed the Clinton-era moratorium on $5-an-acre land transfers and potentially opened vast swaths of back country to mining.

A decade earlier the Clinton administration tackled reforms, some of which were reversed, thanks to Reid, when Bush took office in 2001.

New mining claims have risen 50 percent nationwide since 2001 as the price of gold has skyrocketed.