New West News Brief
Report: Mining Claims Encroaching on Western Cities
By Grant Rhodes, Guest Writer, 3-12-08
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New mining claims are encroaching on the West’s small cities and towns, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group and detailed today in the Salt Lake Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
The number of mining claims in the last five years has doubled, from 207,540 in 2003 to 414,228 in January 2008, according to the Environmental Working Group report. The increase, the report states, is partly due to increasing costs of copper, gold and other metals available in the region.
As Judy Pasternak reports in the LA Times, Arizona, Utah and Nevada lead the way for claims close to cities and towns. Pasternak adds that Utah and Colorado have had the greatest increase, overall, in claim staking. This is because “new activity is intended for uranium mining, in response to growing demand for nuclear power…”
Although fewer than 5 percent of claims are developed into actual mines, Bill Wicker, the Democratic spokesman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, says there is still reason for concern. The claims will likely spark a larger debate about the reform of the 1872 Mining Law. The Environmental Working Group and Pew Campaign are trying to reform the law which they see as grossly outdated.
As Jane Danowitz, director of the Pew Campaign tells Thomas Burr in the Salt Lake Tribune story: “The data show that claims and communities are on a collision course in the West. This potential crash is due in large part to the nation’s frontier-era mining law, which places few restrictions on where and how mining can take place on western public lands.”
Thomas Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association says in the LA Times article: “There’s nowhere in the world that mining has so many restrictions as in the U.S.,” Popovich said. “Do the green activists want to degrade the environment elsewhere so they can preserve ski lodges here?”
The House passed a revised mining law in November that makes it easier to reject claims. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is holding a second hearing today on the issue and is expected to vote on a reform bill next month.
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Comments
Our city planners have let cities encroach on natural habitat, first class farmland, flood plains, superfund sites, airports, coastal tidal zones, et.al., or placed cities where harsh environments have to be mitigated with huge energy expenditures and infrastructure costs.
As to whether the response that few of the claims will be actively mined is a palliative, I think not. One modest strike may open a massive mining/industrial development.
Las Vegas -- the new Butte, Montana??