Market Requires Miners to Clean Up

by Washington REP member Bill Ray, published April 11, 2010 in the Herald, Everett, WA.

Updating the mining law after 138 years is common sense (April 4 guest commentary, “19th-century law in need of a 21st-century update”).

The old law sets fees in 1872 dollars and defines no responsibilities, which does not fit my Republican values of conservation and effective use of markets.

The public deserves a fair market return on our capital investment, especially for a one-time use like mining.

Miners should be required to clean up after themselves; it’s common sense and common courtesy. When pollution has no visible cost, there is no economic payback to using better methods. It is appropriate to burden mining with some of the cost of cleaning up sites run under older rules.

By not fully pricing the mining industry with a return on investment for the public and cleanup costs, the marketplace has the wrong material price, which means the resource is overused when substitutes might be better. Without full pricing there is a hidden tax on everyone else, like when a mountaintop is scraped off into a watershed to mine coal. Damaged habitat may cause fishermen to lose their livelihood. Municipalities may have to seek new water supplies. Hidden taxes.

Well designed mining proposals can be a benefit to the public in general and to the communities where they are located. They deserve a balanced and thorough, but predictable, approval process that considers all uses of the land and the interests of the neighbors, unlike the current law.

It is time Congress addressed this antiquated law with a bipartisan effort.