Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2024

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong but respectful opposition to H.R. 2925, the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, as it has been named here, the fifth bill this week brought to you by our friends across the aisle, the GOP, who, unfortunately, this week seem to stand for guns, oil, and pollution.

My home State of New Mexico has a wealth of minerals, many of which are critical to the clean energy transition. We also have a very long history of mining. Mining, of course, has created thousands of jobs, supported economies across the Southwest and the country, and, of course, is an important part of our economies and communities. It has also left a toxic legacy of pollution in its wake.

As we move to the clean energy future, we cannot repeat the shortsightedness and injustices of the past. The Mining Law of 1872-- let me say that again, 1872--a 150-year-old law that was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War, is still the law that governs mining on public lands to this day.

It gives mining companies rights over public lands that all other industries could only dream of. It makes mining the top priority use of our public lands and gives companies the right to develop any valid mining claim, no matter if that land is a sacred site, a beloved local recreation spot, the headwaters of a critical watershed, or a priority area for other kinds of development--not even if it would pollute a nearby community's water supply.

The Mining Act of 1872--not the bill before us but the one that is currently in effect--contains no environmental or community protections, does not require Tribal consultation, and does not charge companies a cent--not one--in royalties for the minerals that they extract on our public lands. Oil, gas, and coal don't even have that good of a deal.

Mr. Speaker, you heard that right. These mining companies, many of which are foreign-owned at this point, don't pay a cent back to the American people for the royalties of those publicly owned minerals. Not even Big Oil has a deal that good.

We cannot build a sustainable mining future for the United States on such a flawed foundation. This is a law from when the government was helping out prospectors, when it was chasing manifest destiny, and we didn't care if we destroyed everything in our wake.

Wake up. It is the year 2024. We don't have to manage our public lands using laws from the 1870s. Many of us agree that the mining law is badly in need of reform. Republicans, Democrats, Tribal leaders, local leaders, environmental advocates, even members of the mining industry themselves think that it is insufficient. What is astounding about the bill that is on the floor today, the so-called Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, is that it doesn't clarify the situation at all. In fact, it chooses to take us in the opposite direction, to before the 1870s. This bill removes the one frail safeguard that we have in that mining law of 1872. Under current law, a mining claim is valid only if it contains valuable minerals. Miners get the rights to the land only if there is something they can show to be mined there.

Under this bill, any American or, frankly, any American subsidiary of a foreign company, including those that are located in adversarial countries, can put four stakes in the ground on open public lands and pay less than $10 an acre per year to have exclusive rights to that land forever.

This bill would create a free-for-all on our public lands. It would enable our public lands to be given away, not just to the highest bidder but to the first person who got there.

Mining companies--or really anyone with any motive--could lock up any public lands to conduct whatever mining-related activities they want, from destroying sacred sites to building a power plant to encroaching on recreational areas.

What if the public wanted to use the land for recreation? What if it was an important site for cultural reasons? What if we wanted to put renewable energy on that land?

Too bad. Under this bill, the mining industry can use it for whatever it wants, including to dump toxic waste.

Now, some of my colleagues say that this is just codifying the existing practice, but let me tell you, that is not true.

As bad as the mining law is already, and we are talking about the one from the 1870s, it at least allows for the invalidating of claims when the claimant can't show or prove that the lands actually contain a valuable mineral, but this bill doesn't do that.

We have seen that in Ranking Member Grijalva's backyard where the proposed Rosemont mine wanted to dump toxic waste on public land. It wasn't allowed because the mine's land claim was invalid.

Now, here is the thing: When the company lost its case in court, it immediately--and when I say immediately, I mean the same day. That company announced that it found an alternative waste site on private lands. Wow.

Clearly, there was not an imminent need. The company simply would have preferred to put its dumpsite on land that was basically for free from the American people.

Let's be honest about what this bill is. It is essentially stripping away the only safeguards we have in a deeply flawed, very old mining law to give away more giveaways to corporate polluters.

On behalf of Ranking Member Grijalva, whom our prayers and our thoughts are with today, I include in the Record a letter from the Pima County Board of Supervisors in support of responsible mining and in opposition to this bill. County Administrator's Office, Pima County Governmental Center, Tucson, AZ, May 23, 2023. Hon. Congressman Raul Grijalva, House of Representatives, Tucson, AZ.

Dear Congressman Grijalva: On May 16, 2023, the Pima County Board of Supervisors approved the attached Resolution 2023-12 opposing the Permitting for Mining Needs Act (H.R. 209) and the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act (S. 1281), and supporting meaningful mining reform. Since then, we became aware of H.R. 2925, which is identical to S. 1281. All three of these bills contain similar language intended to legislatively reverse decisions by the U.S. District Court for Arizona and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which halted the construction of the proposed Rosemont mine on the eastern slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains, within the Coronado National Forest. Located south of Tucson, within Pima County, this mountain range provides disproportionally high amounts of water for runoff and ground water recharge for the greater Tucson basin, is recognized worldwide for its biodiversity, is culturally important to a number of tribes, and serves as a respite for Southern Arizonans. The ruling confirmed that the Forest Service should have required proof that the mining company's unpatented mining claims were valid before permitting the mining company to dump waste rock and tailings on public land.

All three bills contain language that would allow those with mining claims to ``use, occupy and conduct operations on public land, with or without the discovery of a valuable mineral deposit.'' In addition, those with claims could carry out mining activities on other federal lands absent of claims. This legislation prioritizes mining over other equally important interests and is likely to result in significant unintended consequences. This legislation would remove the ability of federal land management agencies to balance the need for other equally important uses of public land. Furthermore, this legislation is not needed. The mining industry still has the ability to gain access to public land via land exchanges, special use permits, and other permitted means. However, because these actions are discretionary, they allow for an informed and balanced approach to managing a multitude of uses across public lands.

This legislation also has a number of unintended consequences that are alarming for the State of Arizona and Pima County. Not only would these bills increase the ability for nuisance claims on Federal land that could block other necessary federal projects and increase destructive speculation without mineral extraction, our understanding is that they could also impact split estate lands. Split estate lands are lands where the surface is owned separately from the subsurface mineral rights. In Arizona, this is a common occurrence. For instance, the surface can be owned privately, by a local government like Pima County, or managed in trust by the Arizona State Land Department; whereas the subsurface mineral rights are publically owned and managed by the Federal Government. Mining companies or others can make claim to these subsurface minerals, the exploration and development of which can significantly impair the rights of the surface owner to use the surface for its intended purposes.

As the Bureau of Land Management explains on their website:

``When the surface rights to a piece of land and the subsurface rights (such as the rights to develop minerals) are owned by different parties, the mineral rights often take precedence over other rights.''

In addition, the legislation essentially makes mill site claims moot, which were one way that mines could gain access to federal land for waste and tailings in areas that specifically did not have mineral value. Congressional or administrative mineral withdrawals would also be substantially impacted, or complicated. Valid unpatented mining claims are protected or excluded from withdrawals, but this legislation makes moot the concept of ``validity.''

What is needed is comprehensive and meaningful mining reform, not these shortsighted changes that provide the mining industry with exclusive rights to public land.

Please know that Pima County is not anti-mining. The copper mines in Pima County have contributed significantly to national and international copper supplies. Pima County has a good relationship with our two largest copper producers, Freeport-McMoRan and ASARCO, and in particular has taken actions to support expansion of existing mining operations in the area southwest of Tucson. This area is less biologically diverse and more suitable for development, according to the County's comprehensive Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Section 10 permit, both of which were developed based on the best available science and informed by extensive public input. This area also has significant copper reserves for future development. Pima County has also worked cooperatively with two copper mining companies that proposed reopening an underground mine on Mt. Lemmon, north of Tucson, both of which voluntary offered to comply with the County's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan and related conservation guidelines.

In summary, Pima County strongly opposes S. 1281, H.R. 2925 and H.R. 209 and the damaging intended and unintended consequences to the public health, safety and welfare of our community. In addition, we continue to seek comprehensive mining reform akin to the comprehensive, science-based and community informed conservation planning undertaken by our local community in partnership with Federal agencies. Sincerely, Jan Lesher, Pima County Administrator.

Attachment: Resolution of the Pima County Board of Supervisors Opposing the Permitting for Mining Needs Act and the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, and Supporting Meaningful Mining Reform

Whereas, Pima County and the Pima County Board of Supervisors have long advocated for meaningful reform of the 1872 Mining Law, acknowledging that mining is necessary and should occur in places and with methods that protect the health, safety, and welfare of our County's residents; and

Whereas, on January 2, 2023, the ``Permitting for Mining Needs Act of 2023'' was introduced as H.R. 209 in the United States House of Representatives; and

Whereas, on April 25, 2023, the ``Mining Regulatory Clarity Act'' was introduced as S. 1281 in the United States Senate; and

Whereas, both Acts do not provide meaningful mining reform and instead would make it easier for mining companies to gain access to federal lands at the expense of all other uses such as recreation, tourism, conservation, watershed protection, climate mitigation, traditional uses by Tribal Nations, cultural and historic preservation, healthy forest management, and other uses that contribute significantly to the local, state, and national economies; and

Whereas, both Acts would allow mining companies to ``. . . use, occupy, and conduct operations on public land, with or without the discovery of a valuable mineral deposit.'' This includes dumping waste and tailings on federal land without the need to prove valid mining claims, as well as on federal land absent of claims; and

Whereas, both Acts would authorize actions where mining companies secure rights on our federal public lands through unpatented mining claims without proving that the claims are valid, actions that have occurred for too many years; and

Whereas, both Acts are intended to legislatively reverse recent decisions by the United States District Court for the District of Arizona (``District Court'') in 2019 and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (``Ninth Circuit'') in 2022 halting the construction of the proposed Rosemont Mine on the eastern slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains, located in Pima County, and the dumping of waste rock and tailings on 2,500 acres of unpatented mining claims in the National Forest; and

Whereas, the District Court's ruling, which the Ninth Circuit later affirmed, confirmed a long-standing concern, raised by Pima County since the beginning of the Rosemont Mine federal review process in 2006, that Federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service failed to consider whether Rosemont held valid unpatented mining claims; and

Whereas, the District Court's ruling confirmed that the Forest Service needs to consider reasonable alternatives when reviewing mining proposals, providing the opportunity for a more balanced approach to public lands management.

Now Therefore Be It Resolved That:

1. The Pima County Board of Supervisors opposes the Permitting for Mining Needs Act and the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, as well as any similar legislation that attempts to allow mining projects on public lands in areas without mining claims and in areas with unproven mining claims, and supports meaningful mining reform;

2. The Pima County Board of Supervisors calls on Arizona's Congressional delegation to oppose the Permitting for Mining Needs Act and the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act;

3. The Pima County Board of Supervisors directs the County Administrator and the County's Federal lobbyists to take the necessary measures to communicate Pima County's opposition to the Permitting for Mining Needs Act and the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act;

4. The Pima County Board of Supervisors directs that communications to our Congressional delegation emphasize Pima County's support for meaningful mining reform and our record of supporting mining projects in Pima County that adhere to local health, safety, and conservation guidelines;

5. The Pima County Board of Supervisors opposes piece-meal legislation that does not address the issue of mining reform comprehensively; and

6. The Pima County Board of Supervisors affirms support for the rulings by the District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is consistent with past resolutions and actions of the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, it is not just the mining industry that gets to have free rein on these lands from other uses.

One of the things that is important to understand about the language in this bill is that any actor with a few dollars to spare could lock up these public lands and just sit on them until somebody buys them out.

That means anyone who wants to use the land, and that could be for recreation, renewable energy, transmission, or even for another mining claim, would be blocked out so long as somebody was sitting on that claim. Again, this bill takes away the only requirement to show an interest in actually mining the land and just rewards the first person to make a claim.

This bill is not only a giveaway to the mining industry; it is literally a giveaway of our public lands. It is completely mystifying because this isn't even what the American people want.

Our friends across the aisle continue to push for an agenda that the American people haven't even asked for. They voted to cut veterans' benefits, to raise healthcare costs, and to enrich and provide these corporate giveaways, just like in this bill. Where is this coming from? I ask my friends: Where is this coming from?

I deeply appreciate my friends across the aisle for their clarification of their intent, but unfortunately, we can't go forward based on intent. We actually have to go forward based on the bill that they introduced and are asking us to vote on.

I am going to do a little reading from your bill to help clarify for the American people what this bill actually says.

First of all, it addresses security of tenure. For folks that aren't familiar with this kind of jargon, that means ownership, who gets to hold the rights to this land.

Then it defines the kinds of operations that would be tied to this tenure. So let me read them to you. This is what it says in the bill: ``Prospecting, exploration, discovery and assessment, development, extraction, or processing.'' It also goes on to clarify that you can do any activity that is found to be reasonably incident to an activity described in another clause of this bill.

It goes on to say right here in the bill, words on the page, and this is what we were asked to vote on: The ``Rights to Use, Occupation and Operations''--which we have already laid out is basically anything you want to do on the land--``A claimant shall have the right to use and occupy to conduct operations on public land, with or without the discovery of a valuable mineral deposit. . . . `'

Yo. This is a giveaway of our public lands. You can say whatever you want on the floor, but the bill that we are voting on literally says: Whatever you want to do on that land, as long as you pay the fee of $10, you show up, and you make the claim, it is yours. This is a giveaway of public lands. It guts the only safeguard from our Mining Law of 1872.

I want to just make that clarification, and in a moment, we will get more into Rosemont, but I do want to take the opportunity to yield to my dear friend.

I want to take on some of these arguments to make sure that folks understand the broader context in which American mining and manufacturing occurs.

First of all, we just heard some claims that these mining companies can't figure out how to get their mines permitted. Well, I hate to inform my colleagues across the aisle, but most of our companies these days are multibillion-dollar, multinational companies that spend literally millions of dollars a year to lobby Federal, State, and local entities and to employ folks to navigate these processes. These are not entities that are struggling to figure out processes.

Secondly, the United States has not disallowed mining. There are many mines in operation. If my friends across the aisle would like to visit New Mexico, I can take you to one of the largest copper mines in North America. There is lots of mining happening in the United States.

It is true that up until the 1990s, we were a net exporter of critical minerals here in the United States. What caused American production to tank was not laws and regulations; it was global commodity prices, just like oil and gas. What happens when there is international competition is that local entities cannot compete because of competitiveness on the global commodities market.

We are all for American competition. We are all for Made in America. That is why our President, of course, has led, and the Democratic Congress passed, three major bills for a renaissance of American manufacturing and our economy: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the American Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which are making the largest single investment in reshoring American jobs in modern history. That is the reality of what is happening on the ground.

I want to take the opportunity to yield to my dear friend and my sister from New Mexico.

Ledger Fernandez).

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Mr. Speaker, America was blessed by our creator with natural beauty and an abundance of natural resources, from grazing to farmlands to minerals, fossil fuels, solar, and wind so we could feed our families and fuel our progress.

We owe the American people, and, most importantly, our children and grandchildren, a duty to protect those resources so they are available for future generations and Americans are not left with public lands that have been degraded, mines that have been depleted, and profits sent off to foreign corporations. Yes, there are profits sent to China because they own some of those mines.

H.R. 2925 would make it harder to protect the lands that make this country beautiful. Worst of all, it favors the biggest mining corporations and even allows foreign corporations to take American resources for free.

There is a long history of bad actors exploiting, misusing, and abusing their mining claims, especially those corporations with ties to foreign adversarial nations.

H.R. 2925 would give away our Federal lands to these bad actors. Why would Republicans work on a bipartisan basis to ban China from mining American data with TikTok but then be okay with China mining American natural resources for free? Why?

Under the Republicans' proposal, Chinese corporations with the money could put four sticks in the ground, pay a fee, and then claim that land for mining without even proving the existence of these important minerals.

I also point out, in response to my esteemed colleague, that there is mining going on. As noted earlier, we have the Chino mine in New Mexico. It produces copper. It has been producing copper for generations, in fact, for hundreds of years.

Guess what. It is an American company. Freeport-McMoRan is an American company. It is international, but it is American.

We want to do that. We want to make sure that American companies are the ones mining American resources. These are public resources.

For this reason, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee. If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an important amendment to this bill.

My amendment would bar companies from adversarial nations, including China, from conducting mining activities on our public lands. They shouldn't be allowed to exploit American resources and pollute our public lands and to take those resources back to China for free.

Let's make sure the profits stay here, the resources stay here, and the innovation stays here. Why wouldn't my Republican colleagues support that kind of amendment?

Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate that we do have mining in our backyards. As the gentlewoman from New Mexico and I both noted, we have multiple mines in New Mexico. What we don't want are mines poisoning our watersheds and destroying sacred sites irrevocably. What we fear and what we know, based on the language that is in the bill that we will be voting on and that we are debating today, is that that would be the outcome of what they are trying to pass.

I also want to clarify for the record that we actually had Secretary Deb Haaland this morning in front of our committee. She stated this morning that the Biden administration has approved 40 new mines or mining modification permits just since President Biden took office, including 5 critical minerals mines, so the assertion that we heard this afternoon that there has been no new mining is just false.

Mr. Speaker, I feel compelled to address the specific example that was just brought forward about a mining exclusion in the Grand Canyon because I believe that the exclusion that we are talking about was to mine uranium in the Grand Canyon.

Now, I ask the American people: Is that what you would like to see?

In New Mexico, we know the legacy of uranium mining. Our communities are dying from it, the mining communities whose water has been poisoned for generations and those who have been impacted by the materials that were built from that uranium.

That is why Congresswoman Leger Fernandez has been leading an effort that is bipartisan and bicameral with our colleagues from New Mexico to get a RECA amendment passed in this Chamber so that we can help address those communities.

That is why we should not be mining uranium in the Grand Canyon.

Mr. Speaker, proponents of H.R. 2925 would like to argue that this bill is a surgical fix to a problem created by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision on the Rosemont Copper Mine. If this is surgery, then like the mining law of 1872, it is surgery with an ax, not a scalpel. If that evokes an image for you of our post-Civil War surgical maneuvers, then that is what this bill does because it takes away guardrails to protect our communities.

Let's clarify. In 2022, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that the proposed Rosemont mine in southern Arizona could not use invalid mining claims to permanently bury Colorado's thousands of acres of national forests in mining waste, including sites that were sacred to multiple Tribes. The court ruled that it was not a valid mining claim to do this.

The requirement that mining claims must contain valuable minerals for the claim to be valid is a core tenet of the mining law. It is the one, as we have said, fragile guardrail that we have in this antiquated law.

For over 150 years, the mining law of 1872 has given mining precedence over all other uses and values of our public lands. This imbalance of power has left a toxic trail of pollution, destruction, and desecration of sacred sites, and it continues to impact our communities today.

We urgently need to reform the mining law. Instead, the bill that is being put forward here today would make things worse and take us back. It is such a breathtaking giveaway of our public lands that former Department of the Interior Solicitor John Leshy said that it should be called the mining charity act because of the giveaways for these mining companies rather than the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act.

This bill allows anyone to put a stake in the ground in any open public land and pay less than $10 a year to make a claim to those rights forever. Our public land managers have long said that once there is a mining claim in place, they cannot say no to anything mining related on that land.

If this bill becomes law, then the mining industry would be free to pick and choose which of our public lands to lock away and then permanently bury, destroy watersheds, or pollute our communities, to do whatever it wants on those lands that it has tied up. The unintended consequences of this bill go far beyond mining and could hurt our communities irrevocably.

I want to reiterate that this bill empowers anyone with a few dollars, including foreign companies in adversarial nations, to blanket our public lands in untouchable mining claims and block other uses of this land. This bill will create chaos, not clarity, on our public lands.

Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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