I would suggest that this foul-up wase, in part, to the primary land steward having to share concurrent jurisdiction with the Bureau of Land Management.

Cyanide Heap Leach Mining Threatens Much of Southeast Oregon

Until recently, mining has been a relatively minor environmental concern in Oregon. The state's mineral deposits are not highly concentrated, and thus not very attractive to miners. But a hugely profitable mining technique called cyanide heap leaching, which permits the extraction of scattered, microscopic amounts of gold from large bodies of ore, has spurred a genuine gold rush in eastern Oregon and will bring tremendous damage to the area's land, water, and wildlife.

In heap leaching of gold, a cyanide solution is sprayed over enormous mounds of ore, collected in extensive holding ponds, and refined. For the highly capitalized, multinational mining corporations that can afford to use it, cyanide heap leaching is extremely lucrative, extracting gold worth $400 an ounce at a cost of only $200 an ounce. At the Grassy Mountain site that is likely to become the first cyanide heap leach mine in Oregon, Atlas Metal's profits have been projected at $25 million per year over the seven-year life of the mine. Cyanide heap leaching makes it cost-effective to "process" 50 tons of Earth for each ounce of gold.

But extracting such tremendous amounts of ore has a pretty big impact. Grassy Mountain, three and a half miles north of the Owyhee Reservoir, will be levelled and replaced with a pit 2000' across and 800 to 1000' deep—as wide as wide as the National Mall between Independence and Constitution Avenues and nearly twice as deep as the Washington Monument. Once the ore has been thoroughly soaked with cyanide, these heaps are the toxic waste Superfund "clean up" sites of the future. Over 1,500,000 pickup loads of Earth will be moved to yield one pickup load of gold

It is now feasible to use cyanide heap leaching technology almost anywhere, including the Oregon Cascades. Over 65,000 claims have already been filed in southeastern Oregon. These claims are concentrated in Malheur County.

Federal regulation of mining on federal public lands is essentially non-existent. If Oregon is not going to be ravaged by literally thousands of open pit mines and cyanide-tainted piles of earth, state regulation that fully protects both the environment and public health and welfare must be enacted and enforced.

But the legality and effectiveness of state regulation is questionable. The Mining Law of 1872 provides an extremely forceful mandate to mine the federal lands. It leaves little effective role for the states. The Oregon Legislature is considering legislation, and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has proposed administrative rules to deal with this expected crisis. I am optimistic that Oregon will soon pass the most stringent environmental protection statutes ever enacted in the Western States to deal with cyanide mining.

The problem is that, while it is theoretically possible to do cyanide heap leach mining "right"-assuming you don't mind details like deadly cyanide being hauled on highways, big holes in the ground, and lots of water and energy being diverted to mining-it has never yet been done correctly. State-of-the-art control technology routinely fails. Barriers and leach pad liners leak when new. Once the gold is gone, little incentive remains to monitor the toxic waste pile for the next century or two.

To maintain the federal shield for mining against state regulation provided by the 1872 law, most mining companies won't be patenting their lands. When they are done, the federal government will simply own some more toxic waste sites.

1.

Specific Comments on H.R.918

H.R. 918 is a very positive step forward toward significant mining reform and environmental protection of the public lands. I've spoken today of the costs of patenting public land. H.R. 918 would ensure that expenditures of public funds to buy back what has been given away would no longer be necessary.

page 4, Testimony on H.R. 918 by Andy Kerr, 18 June 1991

2.

The citizen suit provision of H.R. 918, to allow the public to enforce the law when the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management can not or will not, is most important. If a law is worth enacting, it's worth enforcing.

3.

ONRC is also in support of giving the Forest Service full authority over hardrock mining on the national forests.

4.

To make H.R. 918 the comprehensive mining law reform necessary, the bill should be strengthened in several ways. Let me give two examples.

a. Refilling the Pits. In Oregon, coal retails for $130/ton. Gold retails for approximately $11,520,000/ton. I know the costs of production are different, but there must be enough margin to refill the pits, to allow the land to obtain some productive use again.

b. Agency Discretion. The land management agencies should be allowed to determine whether such mining is in the public interest. Such decisions should be based on guidance established in land management plans. Until the agencies have equal jurisdiction over the surface and subsurface, good land management is not possible.

Conclusion

Although, not a subject of this hearing, H.R. 2614, the "Mining Law Reform Act of 1991" contains many features of concern to the environmental community. It is an excellent effort upon which to build. It is companion legislation to S. 433, mining law reform introduced by Senator Bumpers. In my opinion, H.R. 2614 is the best mining law reform legislation yet introduced in Congress. I hope the subcommittee and the full committee will give it the most serious attention. Thousands upon thousands of mining claims in Wilderness Areas, Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Recreation Areas sit like unexploded time bombs, waiting for the moment when it becomes economically feasible to mine them.

The 1872 Mining Law also requires that a claimant spend at least $100 a year to maintain a claim. That was a lot of money in 1872, but not today. That claimant would have to spend about $1100 today. If no other reforms were made, making a cost of living adjustment and requiring those who patent to pay fair market value would go far toward eliminating abuses.

Many miners, who actually do want to mine, are choosing not to patent their claims now, because unpatented claims on federal lands are effectively shielded against state mining regulations. As well, the federal government requires no royalties or severance taxes. It's a win-win situation for the miners, and a loss-loss for the land and the American people.

The time for comprehensive reform is now. The 1872 Mining Law may have made sense in the latter part of the 19th Century, but it has been an environmental disaster in the 20th Century. Please pass a mining law for the 21st Century.

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Medberry.

Mr. MEDBERRY. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, my name is Mike Medberry. I am the public lands director for the Idaho Conservation League. ICL is the only statewide grass roots organization in Idaho dedicated to the preservation of Idaho's wild lands and water quality, and, once again, I am pleased to be here before you. Thank you very much for holding this hearing.

ICL strongly supports reform of the 1872 Mining Law, and we appreciate your leadership and patience in taking on this difficult task. In our opinion, any meaningful reform must do at least three things: first, eliminate patenting; secondly, give Federal Agencies discretion to turn down and to modify mining plans of operation based on environmental factors; and, third, assure that reclamation. will return land to its original condition and productivity. H.R. 918, as written, goes much of that distance.

What I would like to offer is a few Idaho examples of why the law begs for reform. On the first point, granting a patent does not assure that the newly privatized land will be used for mineral production. A recent newspaper ad I have enclosed in a packet that you should have just been given is a good example of mining claims being offered as vacation home sites.

In Idaho, there are hundreds of examples of this opportunistic and inappropriate use of mine claim properties. Almost all of the private inholdings within the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, including those on the wild and scenic Middle Fork and Main Salmon Rivers, are former mine sites or claims, and for those few parcels of patented land which are used for mining, all that the patent seems to do these days is short-circuit environmental protection and assure that cumulative effects will not be accounted for.

For example, the Stibnite Mine in central Idaho which originally produced antimony, tungsten, and gold during World War II, was reopened by Superior Mining Company in 1981. It now produces somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 to 30,000 ounces of gold per year off its cyanide heap leach pads. In 1980, none of the mine. area was patented, but by 1990 approximately 350 acres had been patented by the new owner, Pioneer Metals. The patented area is outlined in red on the map that is the second page of that handout. An EIS was done in 1981 on the original mining proposal, but the actual plans of operations over the past 10 years did not conform to the EIS preferred alternative. What has been done on the ground bears only a passing resemblance to what we had expected, and there were many good ideas that were never implemented. The Forest Service and other Federal Agencies must be given explicit authority to exercise discretion over mining activities.

The Stibnite Mine was recently sold to Minvin, which has proposed extensive exploration on its unpatented claims and submitted a 1991 plan of operations which includes three new pits and new road construction. Two of the three pits will be built on newly privatized land and, consequently, will receive no NEPA analysis. The third pit, by itself, will require an EIS because it is on Forest Service land, but the environmental impacts will probably come from all three mined areas and their access road.

56-185 0-92 - 13

Two other nearby mines outlined on that map in blue and green, on the handout, add still more impacts, as one is an active heap leach mine and the other a Superfund site. There is an enormous incentive for Minvin, a new Stibnite Mine owner, to mine the two pits on private land and forego development of the third until it is patented since no EIS would then be required at all for any of the planned development.

Let me hasten to add that the Stibnite Mine is in the midst of spectacular countryside at an elevation up to around 7,500 feet where reclamation is slow or impossible. Streams that pass through the mine site drain into the South Fork of the Salmon River, a candidate wild and scenic river for much of its length and once the single most productive spring chinook salmon river in the Columbia River drainage. Potential for further environmental damage here is great. The Stibnite Mine has also had several State water quality violations in this area of sensitive granitic soils. Twice, free cyanide has been detected in local streams, and the tailings dump covers a former wetland which is now full of seeps and bleeding into the creek.

Mineral exploration and development are proposed in other environmentally sensitive areas of Idaho as well. Exploration is proposed within two miles of the Sun Valley ski resort. Local opposi tion there has been strong because of the area's recreational econo my and the importance of the natural scenery. More exploration is proposed near the top of Caribou Mountain in southeastern Idaho at nearly 9,000 feet. This area has been proposed as wilderness by conservation and is near Gray's Lake National Wildlife Refuge, where trumpeter swans, whooping cranes, and peregrine falcons are found. Further development of two mines within the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness is also proposed.

H.R. 918 should include a provision to give Federal Agencies the discretion to stop a poorly considered mine early on before it be comes an environmental disaster area. The reclamation fund proposed in H.R. 918 is an excellent and necessary idea, especially since the State of Idaho cannot bond at the level needed to fully reclaim mine sites and does not require reclamation of pits at all. The Delamar Mine, which was begun in 1978 in southern Idaho, currently discharges acidic wastes into a nearby creek. The State has not and the miner will not act on this violation of State law. Here, as elsewhere in Idaho, we need Federal help with mine reclamation.

I have enclosed for your information, again, this little packet, a list of recent mine water quality violations in Idaho, many of which remain unresolved.

Thanks for the opportunity to present our views on mining law reform, and I would be pleased to address any questions.

[Prepared statement of Mr. Medberry, with attachments, follows:]

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MEDBERRY
PUBLIC LANDS DIRECTOR

IDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE

before

THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON MINING AND NATURAL RESOURCES JUNE 18, 1991

Mr. Chairman, my name is Mike Medberry and I am the Public Lands Director for the Idaho Conservation League. The ICL is the only statewide grassroots organization in Idaho dedicated to the preservation of Idaho's wildlands and water quality, and has a membership of more than 1,600 families in Idaho and around the country.

The Idaho Conservation League strongly supports reform of the 1872 Mining Law and I appreciate your invitation to present our views on the reforms proposed by H.R. 918, the Mineral Exploration and Development Act of 1991. We believe that the Mining Law of 1872 must be revised to reflect the needs and attitudes of Americans in the 21st century, and to do away with obsolete development polices of the 19th century that have ruled the West for 150 years.

From the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to the final defeat of the Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1891, the official policy of this country was to own all the land from ocean to ocean and from Canada to Mexico. The government and the world believed that the western wilderness contained an inexhaustible supply of land. This land was parcelled out to any individual wanting to live on the land and work it, as encouraged by the Homestead Act of 1862, or given to railroad companies that built lines into the western wilderness, or sold for $5 an acre or less to miners who could prove that a mineral deposit existed on a particular piece of land. The Mining Law of 1872 encouraged the search for and mining of ore to build the new industrial society. Millions of people from Europe, Asia and the eastern United States moved westward to seek their fortunes and fulfill the ideal of a God-given "Manifest Destiny."