This area would be a tailings pile if the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act was in force.

THE MINING REGULATORY CLARITY ACT:

THE LARGEST HANDOUT TO THE MINING INDUSTRY SINCE 1872

Congress could vote as early as next Tuesday on this egregious bill!

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act represents an unprecedented giveaway of America’s cherished public lands to mining corporations, upending and reversing over a hundred years of public land law precedent. Under the bill, anyone—for a nominal fee—gains absolute rights to occupy land in perpetuity, construct massive waste dumps, and build roads and pipelines across public lands to the detriment of all other values. This would preclude all other types of development and use, including renewable energy projects, recreation, and traditional cultural uses.

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act would undermine the federal government’s longstanding authority to safeguard public lands, threatening the protection of irreplaceable cultural, environmental, and economic resources. That’s because the bill conveys mining claimants with an absolute right to permanently occupy lands. If an alternative use—like an electric transmission line or a renewable energy project—needed to cross “claimed” public lands, mining companies could extract large sums of money from the federal government in exchange for giving up their claim.

Contact your Senator and Representative(s) and tell them to

oppose H.R. 2925.

Find your representative here.

Please reach out to your Congressional Representative(s) and ask them to oppose H.R. 2925, the “Mining Regulatory Clarity Act” sometime this week, as it will be voted on next week.

If this bill were law in the 1900’s, Grand Canyon National Park wouldn’t exist as it does today!

Future Senator Ralph Cameron filed mining claims covering the famous Bright Angel Trail, but they were invalidated due to a lack of a valuable mineral deposit. Had S. 1281 been law, Cameron would have had a vested property right that superseded the Grand Canyon National Monument’s (later National Park’s) protections. All future protected lands could suffer this fate.

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act is in reaction to recent court decisions that affirmed longstanding law to the detriming of Arizona’s Rosemont mine. Let’s help make Arizona the state that stops this corporate giveaway.

Unintended consequences – this bill could easily be weaponized. A person wishing to block a solar or wind farm or transmission project could simply file a claim in the path or the project and would be conveyed an absolute right to block it from moving forward.

Under Section 2(e)(1)(B), mining companies would receive a statutory right to permanently occupy and bury our federal public lands under tons of toxic waste. Further, Section 2(e)1(A) grants mining companies automatic rights-of-way for new pipelines, transmission lines, and roads across public lands—eliminating a central provision of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that requires mining companies to receive a permit for such uses just like every other industry operating on public lands. Section 2(e)(2) would also eliminate FLPMA’s requirement that the company pay “fair market value” for using public lands for these facilities.

The Mining Regulatory Clarify Act was authored in reaction to recent court decisions that affirmed and enforced longstanding law.  According to proponents of this egregious corporate handout, the need from this bill arises from ac our case known as Rosemont, as well as two subsequent federal court rulings, where a company proposed using invalid mining claims to dump enormous quantities of waste generated at the mine site.  Their solution was to assert a right to dump water on thousands of acres of public lands, despite any valid mining claims.  The problem with that was obvious and courts blocked them:  holding an invalid mining claim confers no right to use or occupy the lands covered by the claim unless a valuable mineral is discovered.

This bill would tip the scales away from communities, the environment, and our clean energy future--giving the mining industry the power to dictate how we use our public lands.  Instead, Congress should work to balance our nation's clean energy mineral needs with all other public land uses, such as cultural and historical resources, recreation, water resources, and wildlife.