A CHANGE THAT'S LONG OVERDUE
Harry Reid, the New Public Lands Enemy No. 1
UPDATED Friday, March 12, 1 pm:Remember Tom Daschle, Democrat Senate Majority Leader of the recent past, voted out in of office in his home state of South Dakota? Perhaps voters should do it again, this time in Nevada, and defeat the second Democrat Senate Majority Leader in a row. If we do, we might have some chance of saving our public lands from the mining industry.
By Bill Schneider, 3-12-10
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UPDATED Friday, March 12, 1 pm:
It’s probably a coincidence, but later in on the day I posted the following column, Senator Reid told a reporter from the Elko Daily Free Press that Congress won’t take any action on mining reform this year, which effectively kills carefully crafted reform bills in both the House and Senate.
No surprise there. No conservationist working on mining law reform expects Reid to allow a vote on any bill except one written for the mining industry.
And no surprise on the cover story--Congress is just so overworked doing nothing on health care and jobs programs. Never mind that Congress could’ve acted on the same bill at any time during the past four years, but Reid wouldn’t allow it. That’s the real story.
But there was one surprise, sort of. Reid said he’d be interested in passing a mining reform bill agreeable to the mining industry. “The mining companies want it, “Reid said, “and I want it.”
Dah! That last thing we want is a bill “agreeable to the mining industry.” I can’t imagine the current situation being any worse than it is, but then I might be underestimating Senator Reid and his mining buddies. I suppose we taxpayers could pay miners to destroy our public lands instead just letting them do it for free.
At least Reid is upfront with his motives. “We’ve got to work out what they (mining companies) want, and I will take care of them.”
Too bad he isn’t a judge. At least we could get him thrown off the case.
ORIGINAL COLUMN:
I used this headline once before when writing about Mark Rey, former Bush Administration Undersecretary of Agriculture and boss of the Forest Service. Prior to Rey’s Reign of Terror, California Republican Congressmen Richard Pombo held the honor of being the biggest enemy of public lands. Voters booted him in 2006, but he’s back, running for Congress again this year.
Now, we have a new Public Lands Enemy No. 1, none other than current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
As I write this, the second most powerful Democrat in the country is locked in a bitter battle to keep his power and his membership in America’s most exclusive club. It’s a long time to November 2, but early polls show Senator Reid losing to any of the four Republican challengers.
Normally, those of us who value our public lands would be rooting for the Dems, but in this case, we’d be better off with a freshman Republican who might regularly vote on the wrong side of environmental issues, but wouldn’t have the unbridled power to the Senate Majority Leader wields.
Although Senator Reid has taken some flack from his conservative constituency for voting to protect roadless lands and desert tortoise habitat, he is, to put it mildly, the darling of the state’s vast mining industry. And to say mining is big in Reid’s home state of Nevada would be quite the understatement. The Silver State is 87 percent federal land, and in one year, 2007, miners in Nevada extracted nearly 190 tons of gold--three times the total yield in all other states combined--not counting all those tons of silver, copper, urainium and other minerals.
Reid is hopelessly intertwined in his state’s mining culture. He is the son of a miner and owns 14 abandoned mines himself. His two brothers are lawyers representing mining companies, and his son-in-law lobbies for the mining industry. And miners shovel money into his campaign war chest, almost $300,000 so far, and that figure is sure to grow in this critical election year.
And year after year, Reid comes through for his mining buddies and sponsors by single-handedly stopping mining reform legislation.
If there is anything more logical and reasonable Congress should do than modernize the General Mining Law of 1872, I’d like to know what it is. For 138 years, the law has made mining “the highest and best use” of federal lands, trumping all other uses. Miners can still stake a claim to our property and take ownership of it for pennies per acre, regardless of how many billions in gold and other minerals they extract from it.
Nationally, miners have gouged more than $400 billion in gold out of our public land, but they haven’t paid one single penny of royalties back to the U.S. Treasury--even though every other industry taking natural resources from public lands does. In Nevada, for example, one company, Toronto-based Barrick Gold, paid just $9,765 for 1,950 acres of federal land and extracted $10 billion in gold from it.
And the government or we, the public landowners, can’t say no to miners. We must sell our land for pennies. The 1872 law requires it. Remember back in the mid-1990s when President Clinton tried to stop the New World Mine near Yellowstone National Park. The only way he could do it was pay the mining claim holders $65 million, all taxpayer dollars, for federal land they paid almost nothing for and didn’t develop.
With gold selling north of $1,100/ounce and other metal prices also in the stratosphere, the public land giveaway to hard rock miners has doubled since 2003. We now have around 400,000 active mining claims on our public lands.
When the gold is gone, mining companies leave taxpayers with tab for reclaiming broken communities, poisoned waterways, and almost unimaginable wastelands. Instead, miners should be paying reasonable royalties to not only cover the cost of mined land reclamation, but also fund other federal programs--such as a good slice of the budget for the Agriculture and Interior Departments.
But this one-sided economics isn’t the biggest problem with the archaic 1872 mining law. No other industry does more permanent damage to our public lands than miners, large and small.
Some people fret over logged or overgrazed landscapes, but Mother Nature can take care of those problems in few years. But mining is forever. Even Mother Nature with all her power can’t reclaim the spoils and purify the acid water. And most mines involve permanent roads and residential developments that endure long after the miners have moved onto to the next mountain.
Even mines that never open leave a permanent impact. The vast majority of the many thousands of “wilderness cabins” dotting on the choicest tracts of formerly public land are patented mining claims given to mining companies and now private residences.
And we can plan on Senator Harry Reid making sure none of above, regardless how embarrassing this antiquated law is to a civilized society, ever changes.
In 2007, the House passed a bill with reasonable mining law reforms. It stopped the 19th Century public land giveaways and required new and existing mines to pay a small royalty to be used mostly for mined land reclamation. Even though it had plenty of support in the Senate, Reid was able to keep it from coming up for a vote.
Now, essentially the same bill, the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act (S.796, H.R. 699), has been introduced into both the House and Senate, and if Congress doesn’t take some action on it by April, it will be dead until next year. Sadly, conservationists working hard on it suspect it faces the same fate as the 2007 bill because Harry Reid is still there making sure it won’t happen--even though, incidentally, several of the Senate Majority Leader’s distinguished colleagues in the West, such as both senators from Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon, all Democrats, have co-sponsored the bill.
With significant democratic majorities in both houses, the time is finally right to re-write the 1872 mining law, something traditionally opposed by Republicans. But Houston, we have a little problem--the big DINO (Democrat in Name Only) standing in the way or any common sense mining law reform.
Trouble is, of course, assuming Nevada voters dump Reid this November, the floundering and increasingly unpopular Democratic party might also lose control of the House or Senate or both, which puts us right back where we’ve been for a long time, allowing miners to run roughshod over our public land with no limits or consequences, economically or environmentally.
When Congress passed our current mining law, Ulysses S. Grant lived in the White House and George Armstrong Custer was out fighting Indians. Almost unbelievable, eh? We did repeal the Homestead Act, right? Why not do the same with the biggest boondoggle of all time, the General Mining Law of 1872?
I suppose it might not seem so unbelievable if you understand how the U.S. Senate doesn’t work, where one man, owned by the mining industry, can consistently stop something as overdue as mining law reform regardless of how many members of Congress or owners of public land support it. I say, throw the bum out. I’m tired of miners getting the gold and public landowners getting the shaft.
Foortnote: For more NewWest.Net coverage of mining law reform, click here.
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Comments
Even during the reigns of Mark Rey and Pombo (and during a Republican majority), it's Reid who was most successful enacting laws harmful to public land. Pombo was unable to get passage of his proposal to sell land to mining companies for cheap, and Rey couldn’t get through his to sell off national forest land to fund rural schools. But Reid had better luck.
Between 2002 and 2006, he sponsored and gained passage of several pieces of legislation that:
• privatized more than 320,000 acres of public land in Nevada, just in three of his many bills;
• laid down 1/2 mile wide, 448-mile free right-of-way on public land for a pipeline project that would suck northern Nevada dry and transport the water to Las Vegas fountains and golf courses;
• earmarked some proceeds from mandated sales of public land to local governments and projects, including multi-million-dollar city parks, sidewalks (“urban trails”), and vast water infrastructure.
Here are some of the smaller bills he has sponsored (above and beyond the 320,000 acres cited above):
• A bill ordering the Bureau of Land Management to sell 115 acres of public land to the Las Vegas NASCAR Speedway, for expansion of the facility’s parking lot. (passed House only in 2009)
• A bill conveying 467 acres of public land to the University of Nevada, Reno, for free. (Did not pass).
• A bill conveying 35 to 50 acres of federal land for free for use by the Nevada National Guard. (Passed, PL 110-229))
• A bill conveying, for free, 2,880 acres of public land to Clark County for a shooting range. Some of the land was located in a Wilderness Study Area and was released from further wilderness consideration to make it available for the shooting range. (Passed, PL 107-350)
• A bill ordering the sale of 13,500 acres of federal land for development in Lincoln County, Nevada. (Passed, PL 106-298).
• A bill giving the City of Mesquite, Nevada exclusive right to purchase more than 10,000 acres of public land, and conveying to the city at no cost more than 2,500 acres for an airport. (Passed originally as PL 99-548 and subsequently amended several times to add land).
• A bill co-sponsored with Senator Ensign mandating the sale of National Forest land in Douglas County and Carson City, Nevada for development. The six parcels earmarked for sale totaled 231 acres. The bill passed the House but not the Senate.
• A bill that ordered the sale of 5,800 acres of public land to Clark County for future development of the Ivanpah airport. Pending a decision to approve the airport through an environmental impact statement by the Federal Aviation Administration, an additional 17,000 acres will be conveyed to the county. If the airport is not approved, the 5,800 acres will be returned to the U.S. and the county will be refunded the $20 million it paid for the land. (Passed, PL 106-362).
In late 2006, four big land bills were hurtling toward enactment: Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson’s CIEDRA, which would have given away more than 5,000 acres of public land; Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo’s Owyhee bill, which mandated huge, lopsided land exchanges with ranchers; Utah Sen. Bob Bennett’s Washington County bill, which also sought to privatize public land for development and lard local infrastructure projects; and Reid’s bill for White Pine County, Nevada, which mandated the sale of 45,000 acres of public land.
Only Reid, then the Minority Leader, was able to get his bill through at that time—as a rider to a tax-related bill.
Now, much of the land Reid ordered to be auctioned off by the BLM is paved over and covered with subdivisions, and many of those consist of empty homes abandoned under foreclosure.
In “Carving Up the Commons: Congress and Our Public Lands,” a book published by the Western Lands Project, I devote several pages to Reid’s public land deals. Those interested in learning more can contact me to download the book for free.
Janine Blaeloch
Forget the robbery going on, the environmental damage is as you say permanent. Why is it too much to fully expect that the mining companies who do the damage are fully responsible for reclamation of the land? Why is this so hard to get Congress to change? Well, you are dead on: they have all been bought off, Democrats and Republicans alike.
In order to have this occur, you first have to look at how much of this occurs…the single focus LLC that only exists for one particular project, then as it comes to completion, runs into trouble or needs to step up and fix what it destroyed, suddenly it goes bankrupt and there is no one to hold accountable. So, we the public get left holding the bag one more time. The Limited Liability Corporation is designed to do just that.
Ok, so we want to stop this. If we are not voters in Nevada, what can we do to help??
Not one word of all the income taxes and corporate taxes paid by Barrick, for starters. Never mind the remediation bonds now required. The EIS...
Or would you rather have the government operate the mine? Or not ever dig at all because gold is ethically wrong? Except of course for contacts in rocket ships and fillings in back teeth?
Never mind that the surface estate up there isn't worth that much and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the surface estate is split, too. So even if it was a thousand bucks an acre, that's still only 1.6 million.
Reid has pretty much proved his incompetence in other matters, yet he still has a snowflake's chance because there are still a few people with a stake in his political survival.
And you should be careful what you wish for. With Dem negatives being what they are, it's not only 2010. A good house-cleaning might continue, which will leave your token young GOPer from Nevada in a more "senior" position with less likelihood of Alzheimers and also less likelihood of the sort of hypocrisy Daschle, Rahall and Reid are so good at.
Geezer is certainly not alone in having fallen for Reid's masterful self-portrayal as an environmentalist. The D.C.-based environmental groups have helped, depending on Reid to "keep saving" the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to come out swinging against the occasional egregious proposal--opposition to which, mind you, must meet the criterion of having no negative economic or exploitative implications in Nevada.
I received an automatic e-mail from the Sierra Club in February 2008, urging me to write a letter to my local paper about John McCain's 0% enivoronmental voting record in 2007 according to the League of Conservation Voters. When you read a little closer, you realize that he never voted the wrong way on a bill, but he missed every single one of those votes. In fact, he missed more votes than he attended, because he was campaigning for President.
The congessional session before, the 109th, he had a 41% record, which was the third highest record for a Republican. Instead of the Sierra Club or other national organizations encouraging those Republicans who do lean a little more green, they blindly support whoever the Democrat is and subsequently reduce their political clout. Conservationism will truly succeed as a movement, not when this country chooses to elect only Democrats, but when both parties are fighting over how to implement conservation better.
Maybe Reid would make a good lesson on this for the Democrats.
That's just freaking crazy, to put it nicely.
Nevada is on the verge of being torn apart in all directions. Including from massive industrial renewables and deforestation in the name of land treatments. Clearing woody veg out of the way facilitates mine explo.
Just before reading this, I was looking at Mine Meeting minutes from 2003 describing how the foreign-owned gold mines in Nevada wanted to use "renewables". Just like another of Reid's great buddies, Pat Mulroy of SNWA, wants to be "carbon neutral".
He sent out a Press Release about caring about sage-grouse on the eve of the Salazar chicken-out Non-Listing Decision. Yet right now, the El Paso Ruby Gas Pipeline is set to rip right through the remaining sage-grouse leks in the gold mine country to the north of I-80 between Elko and Winnemucca. What the cows and the mines haven't killed off, Ruby will. Reid needs to be called out publicly on Ruby. There may also be a link between the Ruby gas line route on top of all those leks and the gold mines seeking cheap fuel for roasting ore. Ruby is getting water for hydrostatic testing for its pipeline from Barrick, and seems quite cozy with them in many ways.
There are rumors going around that Harry may push the Ruby pipeline through using a Rider -because he wants to get Union jobs because he wants the Unions to knock on doors for him -or something.
If he does that, photo-documentation of the massive destruction of the Ruby line as it tears up critical sage-grouse habitat across Nevada right in Reid's home state as he is mumbling about throwing dollars at ag projects for sage-grouse will be useful.
And you know who holds the big grazing permits in that region? The gold mines. Trashing BLM land for $1.35 a month. Barrick, Newmont, they even have kind of show cowboy sessions.
Down near Eureka now, there is a big molybdenum mine going in - either Chinese or Korean - and they too have grazing permits - acquired when they bought out Base Properties for water.
Sounds like your strategy is to just purge every single person who doesn't agree 100 percent with your idealogy. How's that working for you?
Granted, I've knocked heads with Harry Reid a bunch of times over the past 25 years, especially on water. But Nevada needs him. Not that most of you would give a shit, but he just saved my state from becoming the nation's nuclear waste dump.
I know of and admire your work. I don't understand, though, why it's necessary for us to not talk about Reid's positions and actions and what we don't like about them, because we're afraid someone we don't like will like it? And because these views offend you, that means we don't "give a shit" ? Come on.
His being "less worse" than someone else shouldn't make him immune from truth-telling about his record.
Reid, as any politician, can only hose his constituents so many times, or engage in two-faced hypocrisy only so often during a term. And, if the hosing or the hypocrisy is over the threshold, it carries over.
That's what happened to Foley. That's what happened to Daschle, and now it's going to happen to Harry. At least the guy wasn't stupid enough to guarantee his own political suicide by sanctioning mining reform that had a "higher value" provision in it. That would have been arbitrary and capricious, a complete disaster that would have killed any possibility of future mineral production anywhere on public lands.
As I drove Highway 50, I saw quite a collection of signs saying "Anyone but Harry Reid!" Of course, that doesn't mean squat to all those urban voters.
Leave it to Fotoware to turn this into a rural vs. urban pout
Persoanlly I love Wild Nevada but Harry Reid is no friend of wild nevada. Whats that place called "Coyote springs" that reid's billionaire friend wanted built in endangered desert tortoise habitat and reid somehow made it happen.
Similar to Tester is he not? The jumbled wilerness bills, blind devosion of corporate env. groups. A refusal to look at his record and a fixation on the D before his name.
Partisanship could be the death of our pulbic lands.
You always drag any issue into a confrontational issue of rural vs urban...patheitc really.
Contrary to the implications of the article, Senator Reid has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, rated highly by the League of Conservation Voters, and supported by many Nevada environmental organizations including Friends of Nevada Wilderness and the Nevada Wilderness Project.
He has taken the lead on the battle against global warming with his opposition to new dirty coal plants, his strong support for alternative energy and energy conservation, and his efforts to achieve fuel economy standards for automobiles and trucks. He has won the fight against dumping high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain
Unlike many members of Congress, Senator Reid personifies "family values" in both his beliefs and conduct.
Many Nevada conservationists will be working for his re-election in 2010 because of his strong commitment to the values that Nevada and the United States care about and his ability to achieve these goals. WE NEED SENATOR REID!
Reid has good family values, but so does the mafia, so they would state if asked. He is a Mormon convert in a Mormon state. We understand. If that is a good thing, then Romney is a better deal for the country. Reid has taken care of his family via the family law firm and their government contacts and government work. I understand. Reid is connected. He uses those connections to better his family.
But don't forget Reid finds ways to take public land into private hands. 84.5% of Nevada is Federal land. Another 5% is State land if there were school sections allotted at Statehood. Commerce has to happen on the ten percent of the land that is privately held, or on the public lands. Livestock and mining are the lifeblood of Nevada outside of the urban enclaves. Reid has made a run on the water for livestock and agriculture. The greater Reno area is now watered by irrigation water taken from farmers and ranchers by government. Las Vegas and Clark country have reached into Utah to claim ground water. Reid is a conservationist when his party needs him to be and a pragmatic Mormon when he can be. A windsock at the political airstrip guides him.
If that 84.5% of Nevada that is public land cannot be used for disposal of nuclear waste, just where will that place be? What is his alternative other than not in my backyard? Where is the leadership, his leadership as Senate majority leader, on siting nuclear waste in order that we might have more clean energy? Or is he just another party hack lining his pockets, nodding like a ballpark toy for the cameras, and abusing his seniority?
He is not alone in needing replaced. There is not a Senator in the West that leads by any other means than abject power and theirs is for sale to increase its clout. All of them are jaded and shop worn. Washington DC supports the 7 highest counties by per capita income in the US. That is all about money to influence legislation and the money that is paid as wages to grease the skids of the political process. We send these nondescript local hicks back there and we get back a changed person with a need for greed. Harry ain't no different. My senior Senator, Wyden, a lifetime political hack who couldn't pass the Oregon bar exam in multiple tries, recently got a late in life divorce and viola', is now married to a much younger woman, has his hair dyed Woody Allen red in a plugged comb over, eyes lifted, a new set of twins, and she runs her family's bookstore in New York City and lives there. His voting address in Oregon turned out to be that of his ex-wife's. We have a NYC carpetbagger senator. He visits here a lot. Has staff and offices here. So does Citibank and AIG. Chuckie Schumer might as well be the Oregon Senator. It was his former staffer and beneficiary of his political fund raising who is Oregon's new junior senator. Oregon is no more than a New York City borough politically. Which makes me wonder who pulls Reid's strings? He is, after all, a Mormon worker bee in a city that mob leader Meyer Lansky appropriated to replace Havana as the gambling and vice capital of made mobsters in America. The Eccles banks in SLC laundered the money through loans, and the symbiosis of Mormons and mob Jews made Vegas what it is today: in need of water to keep the lawns green and pools filled and evaporation rate replaced. Reid will get that done, because he has gotten that done before. He has a track record. Sort of like the Taliban getting a moral free pass growing opium to feed infidel and foreigner habits, Vegas gets a pass to feed the illicit habits of the gentiles. And the True Believers get their money and all the natural resources it takes to keep that money flowing and their beliefs reinforced. Don't tout that "Goody Two Shoes" rep to me about Reid......there is no moral high ground to be had in Nevada, on either side of the political aisle. Prostitution, Politics, and Gambling are the three legs of the stool that supports Nevada. Reid is the leader. He takes their money, votes their interests. How appropriate for Washington DC and the Senate. We really have to do better than the Harry Reids of the Congress if this country is to advance a moral and ethical agenda, or stop the decline in all areas of public policy and economics.
If you couldn't come testify about that settlement and your lawsuit you don't have the right to now complain about what Senator Reid has been doing in NV.
You should be ashamed of yourself Ms. Blaeloch. The very least you can do is admit to the people on this site - that the Coyote Springs folks bought you off too.