Interior ordered to re-evaluate mining rules

Associated Press
Billings Gazette

11/21/03

WASHINGTON - The Interior Department is not requiring companies to pay fair market value for the use of public lands and resources, according to a federal judge who ordered the Bush administration to revisit its mining rules.

Regulating the mining of minerals such as gold, silver and copper, the department operated “under the erroneous assumption that it did not need to attempt to obtain fair market value for operations on unclaimed land,” U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. said in an opinion Tuesday.

In October 2001, the administration reversed some Clinton-era mining regulations. It eliminated the government's authority to tell miners they cannot dig on public land where they have staked claims, but kept a requirement that mining operators post bonds to assure they will clean up after themselves.

Kennedy, ruling in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups, ordered the department to re-evaluate its rules in keeping with Congress' wishes that the government receive fair market value when public lands and resources are used.

“It is also clear that the 2001 regulations, in many cases, prioritize the interests of miners, who seek to conduct these mining operations, over the interests of persons such as plaintiffs, who seek to conserve and protect the public lands,” Kennedy wrote.

The judge found Interior Solicitor William Myers III “misconstrued” federal law, ignoring the department's obligation to prevent environmental harm, when he advised the department it lacked authority to ban a company from doing anything “necessary” to mining.

Myers resigned his position after being nominated by President Bush on May 15 as a federal appeals court judge.

Kennedy said the interior secretary has “the authority and indeed the obligation to disapprove of an otherwise permissible mining operation because the operation, though necessary for mining, would unduly harm or degrade the public land.”

But the judge upheld other parts of the rules in response to a November 2001 challenge filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Washington-based Mineral Policy Center and two other environmental groups, Great Basin Mine Watch in Reno, Nev., and Guardians of the Rural Environment in Yarnell, Ariz.

Interior Department spokesman John Wright said the agency was pleased the rules were mostly upheld but legal staff were still deciding if more legal action should be taken.