House considers selling public lands to miners

WASHINGTON – As many as 20 million acres of public land could be sold under an obscure but sweeping change in mining law tucked into a budget bill up for a vote in the House.

A provision in the bill would overturn a congressional ban on letting mineral companies and individuals buy public lands, including some in national forests and parks, at cheap prices if they contain mineral deposits.

"If this provision became law, it could literally lead to the privatization of millions of acres of public land, including national park and national forest land," said Dave Alberswerth, public lands director for The Wilderness Society.

A vote on the overall bill could come as early as today.

Congress has decided each year since 1994 to prohibit mining companies from exploiting an obscure part of the 1872 mining law that allows businesses and individuals to "patent," or buy, some of the nation's most scenic lands at 19th century prices — just $2.50 to $5 per acre. It gives them absolute title, including mineral rights, to the properties.

The Interior Department over the past decade has approved slightly more than half of the 405 patent applications it received before 1994, and is still processing the final 50.

House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., and other committee members want to lift the ban preventing anyone from applying for a new patent application. They propose raising the price to $1,000 per acre or "fair market value," whichever is more. That doesn't take into account the value of the minerals the lands might contain.

Under existing law, companies have had to convince the Interior Department that the land has a valuable mineral deposit and it can be mined at a profit. Department officials say companies typically spend about $10,000 to $15,000 per acre trying to document that it is economically viable to mine there.

Once a patent is granted, the law does not let the government challenge a company if it drops its plan to mine at a site and resells the property as real estate.

Up to 6 million acres of public lands — those where some 300,000 active mining claims are staked now — could be "patented" under the mining law provision. That includes Western deserts and high prairies, national forests and national parks. There are 900 preexisting mining claims on national parks alone, mostly in California and Alaska.

But officials with the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the mining claims, estimate the amount of public lands that the law could potentially allow to be sold off ranges as high as 15 million to 20 million acres.

That additional acreage includes remote desert and mountain basins where no claims have been staked and there has not been much mining, but a profitable mineral deposit could exist.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the changes in law could raise several hundred million dollars, including $100 million that could be spent over the next 10 years for mining cleanups and schools that offer training in petroleum, mining or mineral engineering.

The new language lowers the threshold for obtaining a permit and generally mirrors what the National Mining Association advocated. Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the trade group, said those changes would help boost rural Western economies by drawing investment "in areas where mining companies are clearly the high-wage employers."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., chairman of the House Resources energy and mineral resources subcommittee, said the law needed to be changed because "continuously suspending the patent process is not a solution, it is merely a temporary fix."

"Patenting and purchase of lands is absolutely vital to the health of Nevada's rural communities because it expands the tax base of the local government, which in turn funds schools, emergency services and other infrastructure," he said.

However, Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the committee, said the mining provision "would result in a blazing fire sale of federal lands" to U.S. and international companies.