White House rethinks land regulations

Denver — The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has heeded pleas by the mining industry and suspended implementation of new rules that deal with hardrock mining on public land.

Through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the so-called 3809 rules were held up until their full implications could be studied.

The rules were put into effect by the administration former president Bill Clinton in mid-January, just hours before Bush took the oath of office.

Four lawsuits sprang up after the rules were first issued, in November 2000. Three of the lawsuits were brought by industry advocates (the National Mining Association, Newmont Mining and the state of Nevada), whereas the fourth was filed by the Mineral Policy Center and other environmental groups.

Objections to the rules prompted the BLM to take action, hoping to resolve the concerns before implementing a new regulatory regime.

The new rules remain on the books, though the BLM says it will reinstate the old rules should the review find that changes to the new rules are required. The BLM is offering a 45-day comment period through to May 7, at which time it will decide whether or not to make changes to the rules, though a final ruling could take much longer.

It appears likely the BLM will keep much of the new 3809 rules intact but adopt certain revisions recommended by the National Research Council (NRC) in a 1999 study. That study concluded that the 3809 regulations would be “generally effective in protecting the environment,” though it questioned their enforcablity.

The Clinton administration chose to ignore the NRC report when it put the new rules into effect, though congress had twice directed the administration to draft rules that would “not be inconsistent” with recommendations in the NRC report.

Origins of dispute

Back in the early 1990s, critics of the mining industry began demanding changes to the laws surrounding mining on public land in the western U.S. At the time, the 1872 Mining Law was the target of revision, though those efforts ground to a halt by 1995.

Critics then moved on to federal regulations that governed mining, that is, the 3809 rules. They argued that the industry had radically changed since the time the rules were amended, in 1980, and therefore needed revision.

The new regulations would have increased the amount of bonding required for a mining operation. Also, they would seem to limit the number of mill site claims in accordance with the number of lode claims — an interpretation which effectively tripped up the Crown Jewel gold project in Washington state.

Other changes included removing a provision that exempted small-scale operations of fewer than five acres. The new rules also included a mine veto provision, which would give the BLM authority to block a project that, in its judgment, could affect public lands, regardless of any other permitting authority.

Suspending the new 3809 rules is just the latest in a series of moves by the Bush administration to counteract eleventh-hour environmental actions by the Clinton administration.

Recently, the administration held up new arsenic emissions regulations laid out in the Clean Water Act.

Bush also suspended, pending further review, the so-called Roadless Initiative, which set aside 58.5 million acres across the western U.S. and Alaska, protecting them from mining, logging and recreation.