I have no further questions. The gentleman from Wyoming, Mr. Thomas. Mr. THOMAS. No, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Mr. RAHALL. The gentleman from Indiana. No? Gentlemen, thank you very much, and, again, I express my deep appreciation for the very constructive manner in which you have worked with me and with the staff of this subcommittee. Our next panel, No. 5, is composed of Andy Kerr, the director of Conservation, Oregon Natural Resources Council, Portland, Oregon; Michael Medberry, public lands director, the Idaho Conservation League, Ketchum, Idaho; Louisa Willcox, program director, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Bozeman, Montana, who gave me a very kind introduction when I spoke to the GYC; David (Kim) Wilson, Montana Environmental Information Center, Helena, Montana; and Mr. Bill Martin, vice president, The Cabinet Resource Group, Trout Creek, Montana. Lady and gentlemen, we welcome you to the subcommittee, and you may proceed in the order which I called you. PANEL CONSISTING OF ANDY KERR, DIRECTOR OF CONSERVATION, OREGON NATURAL RESOURCES COUNCIL, PORTLAND, OR; MICHAEL MEDBERRY, PUBLIC LANDS DIRECTOR, IDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE, KETCHUM, ID; LOUISA WILLCOX, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, GREATER YELLOWSTONE COALITION, BOZEMAN, MT; DAVID (KIM) WILSON, MONTANA ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION CENTER, HELENA, MT; AND BILL MARTIN, VICE PRESIDENT, THE CABINET RESOURCE GROUP, TROUT CREEK, MT Mr. KERR. Thank you. My name is Andy Kerr. I am with the Oregon Natural Resources Council. We are a coalition of conservation, sportsmen, recreation, and commercial concerns, and we also have 6,000 individual members. I want to thank the Chair for the opportunity to testify today and compliment the Chair on the fine effort of H.R. 918. Reforming the Mining Law of 1872 is long overdue, and my writ ten testimony recites four examples in my home State of, I would argue, the abuses of patenting, where lands of high public value have been patented and, in some cases such as Rock Mesa and the Three Sisters Wilderness, the Government turned around and immediately spent $2 million to get back what it had just given away under the Mining Law of 1872, and I cite some other examples in there of ongoing situations where patenting is ongoing and it is probably going to result in funds being appropriated under the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or something like that, to buy back lands given away by this archaic law. I would like to address the concern earlier that environmentalists are being accused of saying, “Mining free by 1993." I have not heard that. I think it has gotten confused over the years, and the phrase actually probably was, "Mine free by 1873," and that is 1873, and that was probably the slogan of the mining industry 120some years ago, and they were successful in that. So I think the slogan is left over from an earlier era. The examples in my testimony show that they are in national recreation areas, they are in wilderness areas, they are in wild and scenic rivers, areas that Congress has recognized as having important public values and has sought to protect. The previous claims that were in there, now they are to be patented, and it is going to cost us a lot of money to get those lands back. In Oregon, we were blessed with poor mineralization, but recent technological advances have changed that, particularly cyanide heap leach mining, and so we face a gold rush in southeast Oregon of something that the State is not well prepared to deal with. The first mine being talked about at Grassy Mountain would be as wide as the National Mall between Independence and Constitution Avenues and twice as deep as the Washington Monument, a hole that big. Over 1.5 million pickup loads of earth would be moved to yield one pickup load of gold. There are a lot of environmental impacts associated with that, something not anticipated, I think, in 1872. In Oregon, there are efforts in the State legislature to address this issue, partly in the absence of effective Federal regulation on the public lands. I think, though, that the mining industry, wanting to leave reclamation to the States, I find that admirable, and I hope they support the law that probably will pass in Oregon this year that will be the most stringent environmental protection statutes for cyanide mining anywhere in the Western States. We will see if their allegiance to States' rights hold when they see that final bill, because it is a pretty tough bill. H.R. 918 is a very significant step forward in terms of mining reform and environmental protection on the public lands, and my testimony deals mainly with patenting, but we are supportive of the other reforms in that as well. I would like to mention a bit about citizens' suits. Our experience with the Federal land management agencies is, they occasionally have to be sued to get them to obey or to enforce the laws that Congress passes, and so if a law is worth enacting by Congress, it is worth enforcing by the agency, and sometimes the only enforcement mechanism to make the agency behave is a citizen's suit. You might be able to get at them by calling them up on the Hill and embarrassing them or yelling at them, trying to cut off their funds, but often a lawsuit can force the agency to obey the laws that are on the books, so we think that is a very important provision. We would also advocate, and we are advocating in the State legislation now under consideration in Oregon, to require refilling the pit. In Oregon, I checked the price of coal, and it retails for $130 a ton. Gold retails for about $11.5 million a ton. Now I know the costs of production are different here, but there must be enough margin in there to refill the pits. If you can do it for coal, you ought to be able to do it for gold. In terms of giving the agency authority over its own lands, the Oregon dunes situation is one where I think, because there was split jurisdiction, with the Bureau of Land Management holding the authority over the subsurface, that the Government dropped the ball. The Government was looking for a land exchange, and the lands they were proposing for exchange they do not do an emergency withdrawal. That is a rather cumbersome process in the first place, and, as a result, the mining company went out and claimed those lands as well. So they claimed the very lands the Government was proposing to exchange. In terms of how to decide what is the proper role of the agency in determining whether mining is appropriate in certain areas, I think we can look at a somewhat parallel situation with timber. Yes, the trees are on the surface and you can pretty much tell what you have there, and that is not always the case with hardrock minerals, but there are two parts to suitability determination that the Forest Service goes through or the Bureau of Land Management goes through. They first determine what is out there-the timber-and that is easy to do with timber, and I yield that it is not easy to do with hardrock minerals. But after that, they determine whether irreparable damage would occur if that logging goes forward, and so they make a determination on suitability, and so we could do a similar determination in terms of mining. If irrevers ible environmental impacts and unacceptable environmental effects were to occur, the agencies could say that is a place inappropriate for mining. Now this is somewhat linked with the amount of reclamation or restoration that goes on. If we are talking not ever returning that site to a productive use again, whether it is wildlife habitat or timber production or what have you, then I think that balancing test needs to weigh those long-term effects. But if you have a high reclamation standard that can return that land to a productive use, then you get into the question of environmental impacts perhaps being more temporal in nature as opposed to being permanent. So I think there are ways to analyze the suitability of public lands for whether they should be open for mining or not. In conclusion, I would like to note that Congressman DeFazio's bill recently introduced, H.R. 2614, we think is a very good bill, and we hope that the subcommittee and the full committee will give that full attention as well. We think there are some very good concepts in there that deserve the attention of this committee. So, in conclusion, what we have out there is lots of time bombs in wild and scenic rivers and wilderness areas that are subject to patenting, and the public has expressed its interest in protecting those lands, and the Congress has responded to that, and so we need to diffuse a lot of those time bombs by getting rid of the abuses of patenting. So I would hope that the subcommittee undertakes comprehensive reform now. I think the Mining Law of 1872 may have made sense in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but it has been an environmental disaster in the twentieth century, and we need a law that makes sense for the twenty-first century. Thank you. [Prepared statement of Mr. Kerr follows:] Testimony of Andy Kerr Director of Conservation 18 June 1991 before the Subcommittee on Mining & Natural Resources Washington, DC ов H.R. 918 "Mineral Exploration and Development Act of 1991" Introduction My name is Andy Kerr and I am the Director of Conservation for the Oregon Natural Resources Council. ONRĆ is a coalition of over 55 sportsmen, conservation, education, recreation and commercial concerns interested in the wise use of Oregon's lands, waters and natural resources. ONRC also has 6,000 individual members. I want to thank the Chair for the invitation to testify and want to complement the fine effort of H.R. 918. Reform of the Mining Law of 1872 is long overdue. I want to testify today about four examples in my home state which illustrate the absurdity of this archaic law. Rock Mesa in the Three Sisters Wilderness The first story has a happy ending of sorts. Rock Mesa is a huge outcropping of pumice on the Willamette and Deschutes National Forests. The U.S. Pumice Company sought to exercise its rights granted under the Mining Law of 1872 to exploit the commercial grade pumice. Besides being in the Three Sisters Wilderness, the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail skirts the western edge of Rock Mesa. Prime uses of the pumice were expected to be bunion scrapers and bird beak sharpeners. After many years of negotiations and administrative appeals, the United States spent over $2 million to buy back what it had given through the Mining Law of 1872. Besides the cash, U.S. Pumice took a large tax deduction, which costs the United States as well. The Newberry Volcanoes National Monument While conservationists were preoccupied with the Rock Mesa pumice mining claims, 50 miles to the southeast, another concern successfully patented a small holding between East and Paulina Lakes in Newberry Crater. They weren't really seeking to mine pumice; state and county land use regulations would have clearly prevented it in this environmentally sensitive area. Instead, they were really interested in geothermal development; as Newberry Crater is arguably the hottest geothermal resource in the nation, outside of the Yellowstone region. Even though similar state and county restrictions apply which will prevent geothermal development, the owner is looking to make a killing by selling the land back to the government now that Congress has designated the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. page 2. Testimony on HR. 918 by Andy Kerr, 18 June 1991 Kalmiopsis Wilderness and Chetco Wild and Scenic River Located in deep, rugged canyons, among thousands of acres of untouched forest, giant trees, rare plants, positively clean and clear water-the Upper Chetco River is a storehouse of the natural beauty and biological diversity of the Siskiyou-Klamath region of southwest Oregon. You'd be hard pressed to find a better example of wilderness values worth visiting and protecting, a fact which Congress has recognized by designating the Upper Chetco a Wild and Scenic River and the area around it the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. But there are holes in both the Wild and Scenic Rivers and Wildemess Acts-holes big enough to drive bulldozers, dump trucks, and gravel dredges through. The holes are 2400 acres of mining claims on the Chetco River bottom, filed decades ago before Wilderness designation in 1964 or Wild and Scenic River designation in 1988. Seventeen miles of mining roads have already scarred the area's steep, fragile canyons. Now full-scale gold mines threaten several of the Chetco's virgin gravel bars. The owner of the larger group of claims will soon attempt to patent his claims in order to operate with even less environmental oversight. Once the claims are patentedfor as little as $2.50 an acre-the land will become a private inholding in the public's Wilderness. ONRC and others are urging acquisition of the mining claims perhaps with Land and Water Conservation Fund monies and the nation will have to pay far more than $2.50/acre. Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area The North Spit of the Umpqua River, due west of Reedsport, is one of the wildest and most endangered strips of coastal dunes on the Oregon Coast. Habitat for many rare and sensitive species of plants and birds, the North Umpqua Spit is now itself threatened by the sale of the heart of the area to a sand mining company. Congress included the threatened area in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area in 1974. In fall and winter, thousands of shorebirds and numerous species of migrating waterfowl including tundra swans rest and feed at the North Spit. The western snowy plover, which has been listed as a threatened species in this state by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (and recently found by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to be "warranted, but precluded" from listing under the federal Endangered Species Act.) nests on the beaches here. Bald eagles (federally threatened), peregrine falcons (federally endangered), osprey and northern harriers hunt and fish above the rich, marshy plains of the Umpqua's estuary on the east side of the spit No less interesting are the rare plants which live here, a group which includes insectivorous sundews; two species of orchids; and clubmoss, a rare and primitive plant. Small ponds and deflation plain meadows, including the Threemile Creek area on the extreme north end of the spit (which has been proposed as a Research Natural Area) also hold a variety of wildlife and floral treasures. This diversity persists in part because exotic European beach grasses which cover (and form) the oceanfront dunes have not yet invaded much of the dunes that is dry sand. In 1979 the North Spit of the Umpqua was recommended for Wilderness protection by the US Forest Service (the managing agency). Unfortunately, Congress failed to act on that recommendation, and much of the North Spit was opened to abusive forms of off-road motorized recreation. But the worst was yet to come. Coosand Corp held an old claim on 780 acres in the middle of the spit, and in the summer of 1989 the company moved to patent the land. Over the objections of Congressman Peter DeFazio and other concerned members of Congress, the BLM (which holds jurisdiction over the mining claim), issued a patent on October 10 which deeds the 780-acre parcel to the Coosand Corp. The Forest Service is trying to negotiate a land exchange with Coosand Corp. to get the land back. Failing this, Congress will either have to come up with several million dollars to buy back the land or lose it to Coosand forever. Either way the public loses, but hopefully the North Spit's incredible ecological and recreational values will be protected. When the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, which administer mineral resources on national forest lands, proposed to exchange the sensitive claims for some similar sand dunes outside the Oregon Dunes NRA, the agencies failed to withdraw the trade lands from mineral entry-and CooSand filed claims for those sand dunes too! |