brand is doing the who is the expert on this? Are you still on here? Are you the expert on the study too? Mr. KNEBEL. Yes, sir, I am the one who entered the contract for the study. Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Now, every study has to use certain assumptions and the chairman has raised some questions regarding assertions or assumptions in your testimony and other testimony regarding his bill. Who is going to be the arbiter of the assumptions that are used? If you take these grand assumptions that, you know, there are going to be these extraordinary impacts and all these new impediments, then, of course, you are going to say, well, gee, 80 percent of the industry is going to go away. So who is going to be the arbiter of what the basic assumptions are that are cranked into the study? Can you give us a little bit of discussion of the methodology? Mr. KNEBEL. Well, the methodology in selecting the law firm and Coopers & Lybrand which we asked to do it was the result of our Public Works Committee's analysis of the bill. And I think, frankly, what you do when you try to do a study the baseline is the piece of legislation. We are trying to determine just exactly what impact H.R. 918 might have on the domestic mining industry if indeed it were to be enacted. So the baseline is the legislation and the interpretation is based on the views of several attorneys who represent the various mining companies and different private attorneys who have studied the bill. Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. Well, then I don't look forward to the study because it will be worthless. I mean, if you make excuse me, sir. Excuse me. If you make an assumption that-I mean, you know, your baseline assumption is absolutely essential here and you need a little bit more of an impartial process in determining it. I am against reform. Therefore, I look at this reform and I say this reform would stop 80 percent of all mining activities on public lands. Now, Coopers & Lybrand, you tell me the economic impact of stopping 80 percent of all mining activity on public land. It is devastating. Of course. Well, you know, I can't remember what the Latin is for that sort of reasoning. You know, I never studied Latin. But it serves-you know, it has got an internal problem. Now, if you want to give us a study that you would like us to look at, and I would be happy to see an impartial study, then let's have somewhat of a less prejudiced analysis of the bill. I mean, you stay in here. I mean, we can put together a program to oppose any change in the mining reform. This is what the AMC survey is all about. This is how we do it. These are the things we put together. We talk about the threat to national security and we talk about this and we talk about that, and we can totally oppose the law. I am going to give you a piece of advice. And I don't give a lot of advice for free, but I will give you a little bit. The cable industry is not necessarily particularly analogous to you, but in the last Congress the television cable industry, which impacts a great deal of the public, which this legislation does, and the public has a strong opinion about, and to some extent the public has a strong opinion about this and it is developing, had an opportunity to go with what would have been a very modest reform in the last Congress. Well, they got greedy. They killed it in the Senate. They got some of their favorite Senators who have been pimping for them all along, Senator Packwood and others, to hold the bill and kill it in the Senate. Now, suddenly they are confronted with one hellacious reform that they can't live with, and they are saying, my God, you can't do this to us. Well, they may get that. They could have had something that would have been reasonable they could have lived with, the public would have liked a little bit. It wouldn't have been great. Everybody would have been a little bit happy. I am suggesting, don't go down the road of saying no way, no how, because you think you can put together this coalition, because you can come up with a report saying no how, no way. Come in and work with us and be a little bit productive, and give us real concerns to deal with, and we are reasonable people and we will do that. That is the piece of advice. It doesn't warrant a response. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. KNEBEL. May I respond nonetheless, Mr. Chairman? Mr. KNEBEL. Congressman, I very much appreciate your advice and your counsel is well heeded, believe me. I believe you were out of the room when I read the statement summarizing our policy position, and we have indeed been very mindful of the concerns and we have looked at areas which we believe can and properly should be changed to indeed impact properly the public perception. I submit to you, however, that the GAO studies which have been done in this area, they have been criticized by other Government Agencies. If I were to come up here and to present testimony to this Congress without having gone to the trouble of doing a study, I daresay you would suggest that I had not done my homework. Give us credit at least, and give us time to develop a study which can demonstrate the impact of this legislation if indeed it is passed. Thank you. Mr. RAHALL. The chair wishes to thank this panel for their testimony. Before we go to panel No. 3, we are in the process of a roll call vote on the floor of the House, so the subcommittee will stand adjourned for 10 minutes. AFTER RECESS Mr. RAHALL. The subcommittee will resume its sitting and hear our next panel composed of Michael J. McCloskey, the chairman of the Sierra Club, Washington, DC.; Lynn A. Greenwalt, vice president, National Wildlife Federation, Washington, DC., and on behalf of The Wilderness Society, Washington DC; Philip M. Hocker, president, Mineral Policy Center, Washington, DC., and on behalf of American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, Maryland; Brock Evans, the vice president for National Issues, National Audubon Society, in Washington; and Mr. Paul C. Pritchard, the president of the National Parks and Conservation Association, Washington, DC. Do we have everybody? OK. Gentlemen, we welcome you to the subcommittee, and you may proceed in the order I called. PANEL CONSISTING OF MICHAEL J. MCCLOSKEY, CHAIRMAN, SIERRA CLUB, WASHINGTON, DC; LYNN A. GREENWALT, VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION, WASHINGTON, DC, ON BEHALF OF THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY, WASHINGTON, DC; PHILIP M. HOCKER, PRESIDENT, MINERAL POLICY CENTER, WASHINGTON, DC, ON BEHALF OF AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY, BETHESDA, MD; BROCK EVANS, VICE PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL ISSUES, NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY, WASHINGTON, DC; AND PAUL C. PRITCHARD, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL PARKS AND CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, DC Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Mr. Chairman, I am Michael McCloskey and I am speaking for the Sierra Club here today. The Sierra Club believes that the need is clear to completely replace the 1872 Mining Law. The record is awash with evidence that this 1872 law legitimizes abuse of our environment. We believe that enacting only limited changes into law now would be losing an important opportunity that ought to be grasped. The problems inherent in the current Mining Law run so deep that only a completely new law will ensure protection of our environment. We believe that a sound new Mining Law must include three basic elements. It should give explicit authority to Federal land managers to exercise discretion over whether mining takes place or not. It should establish environmental standards for mining operations and hold operators accountable for environmental consequences. This should be done through operating standards, bonding, and uniform Federal reclamation standards. And it should return to the public royalties in return for the use of public lands and the minerals that are taken from those lands. We believe that the bill before you, Mr. Chairman, H.R. 918, contains many important provisions that move in this direction, and we commend you for introducing it and moving it along. The bill eliminates patenting of public lands and minerals. This has been subject to widespread abuse. It establishes a reclamation fund for abandoned mines. Unreclaimed mines have taken their toll on hundreds of thousands of acres in our Western States. It contains a citizen suit provision, inspection and enforcement clauses, and takes steps to prevent known violators from violating again. However, we do believe that it needs changes to strengthen it further. It should be revised to give agencies full discretion over mining. Section 201(b)(4) doesn't really do that. It only gives Federal land managers the ability to approve or to modify, but not deny, plans of operations if the land-use plan for the area in question allows mining. The bill fails to provide the discretionary system that the Sierra Club believes is critical to protect other values on public lands. This is the most important change that we recommend today. Without the authority to deny mining on a case-bycase basis, H.R. 918 perpetuates one of the key flaws in the current law. We also believe that H.R. 918 should expand the list of areas that are closed to mining to include also units of the National Wildlife Refuge System, the National Trails System, and the National Park System. Moreover, H.R. 918 should more adequately address reclamation problems. Let me give you some examples from BLM operations in Nevada of the kinds of problems that we think need to be better addressed. Nearly every BLM district in Nevada has a substantial mining industry, but the interpretation of BLM's regulations there vary widely. Our Nevada activists have found that lack of consistency between BLM districts is a major reason that the 1872 Mining Law reform legislation must have clear and specific national reclamation standards. The BLM is basically run there on a district level, with little oversight either by the site or by the national office. Reclamation requirements should be included up front as part of the plan of operations. The bill should link reclamation with operation planning, ensuring that reclamation is planned at the outset. In the Ely District, the BLM granted a permit to the USMX Casino Mine with essentially no reclamation plan in the environmental assessment. In the Battle Mountain District the environmental assessment of the major expansion of the Copper Canyon/ Copper Basin gold mine south of Battle Mountain had a completely inadequate reclamation plan. There was no provision for reclaiming many miles of roads there. The revegetation standards in the plan even included a suggestion that annual plans would be acceptable. These inconsistencies between districts of the BLM there have been made apparent by Nevada's State Legislature's action with their new reclamation law that now requires more uniform standards. But twice during the 1991 session of the legislature the mining industry attempted to remove the authority of the State of Nevada over reclamation on mining of BLM lands. That is a testament to the leniency of BLM's regulations that industry's defenders in the legislature wanted the State to have no role at all. Though there is no requirement in the bill that reclamation standards be incorporated into the plans of operations, there are reclamation standards spelled out in some detail there, and we commend you for including items such as prevention of acid mine drainage or other contamination of surface waters in particular to prevent contamination of ground water. We also believe that the reclamation standard of the bill should stipulate that mine lands be recontoured to their original contour approximately. We believe that diligence requirements should be completely abolished and replaced with a higher fee. We believe that the bill should completely eliminate ground staking of claims, which merely cause litter of the landscape. The claim should be filed in computers or file cabinets, not on the ground. We believe the bill should also call for a report to Congress on how it is being implemented, so that Congress can track the effectiveness of the new law for at least the first several years after enactment. We also commend Congressman DeFazio for introducing a comprehensive reform bill, and we will want to work continuously with the subcommittee as it continues to work on this bill. We look forward to doing that. Thank you. [Prepared statement of Mr. McCloskey follows:] Statement of Michael McCloskey Mr Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am Michael McCloskey, Chairman of the Sierra Club. We are a national, grassroots environmental organization that counts more than 600,000 members, with groups and chapters in every state. Since our founding in 1892, our members have been dedicated to the protection of our public lands from mining abuses. I am pleased to testify today on behalf of those members regarding H.R. 918, the Minerals Exploration and Development Act of 1991. THE 1872 MINING LAW NEEDS TO BE REPLACED I would like to commend the Subcommittee for its interest in this important public resource issue. The need for the complete replacement of the 1872 Mining Law is clear. The record is awash with evidence that the 1872 Mining Law, designed for an era when the government was bent on disposal of the public domain, legitimizes the abuse of our environment. A rash of Government Accounting Office studies and commissioned reports have unequivocally established the need for fullscale legislative reform. These past findings, the well established hearing records, coupled with an increasingly aggressive and prosperous mining industry, have heightened concerns about the environmental impacts of large scale, modern mineral production on the public lands. - The Sierra Club has made replacement of the Mining Law a priority in its work this year. We continue to believe that a complete rewrite of the Mining Law is needed. Enacting into law only partial changes such as those that would merely institute small holding fees for claims or charge fair market value for surface value of lands -- would be an opportunity lost. The problems inherent in the current mining law run so deep that only a completely new law will ensure protection of our environment. We believe that a sound new mining law must include these basic elements: 1. Give explicit authority to federal land managers to exercise discretion over whether mining takes place. Current law allows mining to routinely override all federal land planning processes, and it is treated as the highest and best use of lands. Agency personnel continue to insist that they have no authority to weigh the value of the proposed mining activities against other values. 2. Establish environmental standards for mining operations and hold operations accountable for environmental consequences through operating standards, bonding, and uniform, federal reclamation standards. 3. Return to the public royalties in return for use of public lands and the mineral taken from those lands. Royalties should fund, in part, an abandoned mine clean-up program. Patenting of both public lands and minerals should be ended. |