Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, gentlemen. Let me begin by commenting on the fact that one of the witnesses, Phil Hocker, happened to have attended every one of our field hearings that we have had on this issue. He has not missed, as a matter of fact, many witnesses, except perhaps to go out of the room to check on what people from the West were up to or to have your own press conference. But he did hear all of the testimony that the subcommittee has heard this year, and I certainly commend you for that, Phil.

And, as the only witness that has done that, I would just like to ask you what are your specific impressions of the whole range of field hearings that we conducted.

Mr. HOCKER. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. My first impression, frankly, has been of your own stamina and your own attentiveness and courtesy and the care and patience with which you conducted those. And I would extend that to Congresswoman Vucanovich and to the other Members of the subcommittee. I suppose the first thing I would say that I learned is never to eat a mineral while testifying before the subcommittee, other than water.

But more seriously, it was frankly a thought-provoking set of days, as I am sure you found it. I think probably the main thing that I saw was a parallel with the kind of concern that we saw in oil and gas leasing reform where there were a number of quite sincere folks who were used to working with a given system of laws and regulations and had found out how to operate successfully in that who were concerned, I think quite honestly, about what it would mean to their lives and their professional careers to have to adjust to another set, and yet who also seemed to be capable and competent and intelligent people, enough so that I was confident that they would successfully adjust if a thoughtful and coherent system were put in place of the one that they had been used to. I guess I would also say that I thought the most eloquent testimony, with due respect to all of the witnesses, that we all encountered in that process was the testimony given by the high walls that we saw, by the dredge tailings in the streams around Fairbanks and the other physical evidence that was lying around the countryside.

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you. You know, you mentioned the cost of Congress not enacting the Mining Law reform last year as being $880 million, I believe it was, and you give specifics of that in your testimony. But I just hope that you are not laying that at the feet of this particular subcommittee chairman.

Mr. HOCKER. No. Hardly. You have done everything you could to improve this and redress the situation.

Mr. RAHALL. I appreciate those comments.

Mr. McCloskey, the last time that you appeared before the subcommittee on Mining Law reform was in 1987, at which time you still supported the imposition of a leasing system on the hardrock mining industry. I see that this is no longer the case, and I wanted to bring this point out and stress it, give it emphasis, because time and time again during the course of the field hearings we heard the allegation that the Sierra Club's motto is "Mine free by 1993. Bureau of Mines Director TS Ary even attributed this motto to the Club in the Bureau's monthly magazine. Yet, to date, we have

never been able to pin down anybody who could ever directly attribute this quote to the Sierra Club. In fact, my staff called Director Ary, we tried to ask him where he got it from, and he assured them that he would produce that information. He has either forgotten about our request or he has chosen not to, but anyway we have not heard from him about it.

I would just like to ask you where do you think this stuff is coming from, this quote?

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Well, Mr. Chairman, it is a colorful charge but it certainly is not from us. It is not our motto. It is not something we believe in. We have no knowledge whatsoever of this preposterous motto.

The Sierra Club believes that there is a place for mining on public lands, and, of course, on private lands too. We believe some places are not appropriate, some places have higher environmental values, some have higher values for mining or for other commodity purposes. So this is so far from reality that fits the Sierra Club that I think whoever originated it simply didn't know the Sierra Club, and for that matter the environmental movement.

Mr. RAHALL. One of the concerns that I believe industry has over the land-use planning provisions of this bill, even though as I demonstrated earlier they are a reiteration of what is currently required, is that if mining is considered in conjunction with other resource values the BLM and Forest Service managers would place a higher and better use designation on just about every other use of the land other than for mining

Does this panel believe that this is a justifiable concern? In other words, has it been your experience that these Federal Agencies are filled with personnel who are secretly anti-mining or have their own agenda to destroy the mining industry?

Mr. MCCLOSKEY. Well, Mr. Chairman, that has certainly not been our experience. Particularly, the Bureau of Land Management in our view has been pro-mining rather than anti-mining, and I think it is rather strange that when we have got a situation where mining is put ahead of all other uses that they think without the shield of this ancient law that suddenly it is going to go to the bottom of the list being the least preferred use. In general, I think if we see biases in agencies it is toward commodities and toward economic values, and I don't think passage of this law is going to change any of those biases.

Mr. RAHALL. Anybody else wish to comment?

Mr. HOCKER. I would echo Mr. McCloskey that if the BLM is secretly anti-mining the secret is well-kept. But seriously, I think you have put your finger on a real industry concern, and I think we recognize it as a legitimate one. There is concern that if mining is weighed against other values they will never get a chance to open another mine. I think it is an honest fear. I think it is not an accurate one. And I think that the challenge in crafting legislation is to come up with language guiding agency discretion which ensuresand I think, frankly, there is good argument that existing law such as the Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970 already addresses this-but that guarantees that minerals will be given fair consideration as against other values in these discretionary decisions.

Mr. RAHALL. You know, one of the common themes we have heard from the environmental organizations that have testified during our field hearings, and which you are again repeating today, is that the pending legislation should be explicit in allowing the discretion to just say no to mining. On what specific basis and under what criteria would you have such a judgment to just say no be made?

Mr. Greenwalt.

Mr. GREENWALT. First of all, it is very difficult to establish a set of standards which can be applicable with equal weight all across the board because of the variation in the circumstances in which the land manager finds himself. But it seems to me there are some basic standards that can be established, for example, areas currently under consideration for wilderness designation and this sort of thing should be fairly easy to deal with. The really difficult problems arise when one attempts to identify and give weight to values that are perhaps somewhat less obvious-wildlife range. Is wildlife habitat in its present circumstance in this place at this time an overriding value? That I think has to be looked at carefully.

I will say, Mr. Chairman, that I approach this with a little apprehension because some of us have been working for some years, as I think the chairman understands, with members of the mining community to discuss this very thing. How do you identify ways and places and circumstances in which you should forego mining? And our dialogue group, as you know it has been called, has found common ground on a great many issues. This is one in which the really fundamental difficulties manifest themselves.

The real-I am tempted to say as a former bureaucrat and one who for some years had a modest responsibility for directing the performance of other people, to suggest that very often the best decisions may be made by people who know their territory and they know what the law is and they know what the rules are, and they know the probable consequences of decisions that will be made. And, in my former life, when I relied on upwards of 3,000 or more people to do this kind of thing, I felt comfortable if I thought the person was professionally well-founded and if he understood, he or she understood the basic rules being applied. And, for that reason, Mr. Chairman, I am loath, indeed not capable of suggesting to you a roster of things that ought to be registered because they may apply in some cases and not in others. If it were possible to legislate competence and a high degree of performance, I would urge you to do so because therein I think lies much of the solution to this kind of problem.

Mr. EVANS. If I could just speak briefly to it, Mr. Chairman. There are some obvious things, as Mr. Greenwalt said, like areas being studied for wilderness proposals officially before Congress or under inventory of some kind. Also the statutes. But beyond that I think it would just be a balancing test on a site-by-site basis. We are willing to take our chances in the forest planning process. Let's take national forests, for example. They have public hearings, they have public comment, they publish maps, they publish alternatives, people come and have their say, and then determinations are made. The Forest Service does this on the basis of timber. We don't agree with them very much, as you well know, on this issue. But