Support 1872 Mining Law Reform
May 10, 2008 is the 136th anniversary of the 1872 Mining Law, passed before Colorado was even a state, well before uranium mining, open pit and cyanide leach mining, and when our population was under 100,000 people. Yet in spite of the many changes the American West has undergone in the last century, this law still governs how this industrial activity—the leading cause of toxic pollution in the United States—occurs today.
Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a genuine reform bill that would update this archaic law and bring hard rock mining law into the 21st-century. Now the U.S. Senate must act, and soon.
Colorado's two senators will play key roles in passing meaningful reform legislation in the Senate, but they need to hear from you NOW!
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Talking Points
Specifically, genuine mining reform must:
- Ensure a fair royalty return from developing the public’s lands and minerals, helping to provide needed funding to clean up abandoned mine sites scattered around the West and still polluting our water and lands.
- Include strong environmental protections and reclamation requirements to protect our clean water, important wildlife and recreation areas, and to safeguard our most cherished, scenic public lands—like National Parks, wilderness areas, and roadless, national forests.
- Give local governments, states, and tribal agencies more say over which public lands should be developed for this industrial activity, and allow these jurisdictions to petition the federal government to have certain community-valued lands (such as watersheds for drinking water) managed for uses other than mining.
- Recognize that some public lands should be protected for other values and managed for other vital public uses other than mining, and give land managers more options and discretion in ensuring that these other uses and values are properly recognized and protected.
- End the ‘patent’ giveaway of our public lands still on the books that allows corporations to ‘buy’ public lands for as little as $2.50 an acre. In Colorado, claims filed under this outdated law have jumped over 400% since 2003, according to the Environmental Working Group. Many of these claims are for uranium mining, which did not even exist when the law was passed.
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