In a supreme act of either irony or cynicism, the Bush Administration today - on the 134th anniversary of the enactment of the General Mining Law - brings to the American people a proposal that would exempt hard rock mines from liability under the Superfund and the Clean Water Act requirements, declared U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-WV).

On May 10, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law what has become known as the General Mining Law or the Mining Law of 1872. Since then, this law has allowed miners to extract an estimated $245 billion worth of gold, silver and other valuable "hard rock" minerals from Federal lands for free. Unfortunately, the American taxpayer has not directly benefited from this because, unlike all other Federally-owned commodities, mining companies pay no royalties or production fees on the valuable minerals they take from the public's land base.

"The hardrock mining industry has been getting away with highway robbery for decades, insulting the integrity of the Federal government and the intellect of the American public," declared Rahall.

Adding injury to insult, mining companies have left behind a scarred and pock-marked landscape due in large part to the 1872 Mining Law, which has no environmental protection provisions. As a result, the headwaters of 40 percent of Western waterways are polluted by mining, and hundreds of thousands abandoned mine sites litter the West, including 87 abandoned mine sites so toxic they have been designated as Superfund sites.

Today, the Administration proposed the "Good Samaritan Clean Watershed Act", a proposal that purports to promote the cleanup of inactive and abandoned mines by limiting liability from certain environmental laws to innocent parties who volunteer to provide partial cleanup of such sites. Instead, it would simply give the owners of hard rock mines a free pass from liability under the Superfund and the Clean Water Act requirements.

Rahall, along with a bipartisan group of colleagues, has introduced legislation, the "Federal Mineral Development and Land Protection Equity Act of 2005", which would prohibit the continued give-away of public lands. It would require that a holding fee be paid for the use of the land, and that a royalty be paid on the production of valuable minerals, such as gold and silver, extracted from Western Federal lands. It would, as well, require industry to comply with some basic reclamation standards to insure long-term protection of the environment both during mining and after it has been completed.

Rahall's legislation would not only bring mining law into the 21st century, it would set the course for the future of a thriving industry. Since 2001, the Bureau of Land Management has seen a four-fold increase in mining claims filed.

"The irresponsibility of this Administration's proposal is breathtaking. The environmental damage caused by hardrock mining is a result of weak and at times non-existent mining regulation. The coal industry has lived up to its responsibilities under these laws without so-called ‘Good Sam' legislation - the hard rock industry can, and should, do the same," concluded Rahall.