1872 Mining Act to be repealed-- Your Last chance to steal tribal / federal land!

[Leopolds Ghost]

My father spent much of his life working on this issue... minerals, oil and gas all being carted off tribal, and public lands without the permission of the people the lands are held "in trust" for.

Forget Karl Rove & co -- Did you know the Interior Dept. has been in contempt of court on this issue since the Clinton administration? They refused to tell a judge where $6 billion went....

NYTimes

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — The House is expected Thursday to take a major step toward dismantling the last significant law remaining from efforts to settle the American Wild West, an 1872 mining statute that has allowed vast treasures of gold and other minerals to be carted off federal lands without any royalties paid to the government.

For 135 years, the General Mining Law has permitted prospectors to stake private claims to federal lands, although miners now tend to be corporate conglomerates, not frontiersmen with pickaxes. Environmentalists say the law has also left Western states deeply scarred by abandoned toxic mines.

A House bill, the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act, would permanently bar the sale of federal lands to miners and would require them for the first time to pay royalties of up to 8 percent of gross income from mining, which would go to a fund to clean up abandoned mines. It would also establish new permitting and environmental rules.

Supporters say such changes are long overdue. “This is the last that I know of those frontier-era legislation to remain on the books,” said Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, who for more than 20 years has been working to overturn the 1872 law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/washington/01mining.html?ref=us

[begin_within]

1. It's about time - but what are the chances Bush & Co. will go along with it?

[terisan]

2. Is this the law Bush Sr used to give away gold mine to Barrick and then get big bucks for himself

He did this in the last months of his presidency and then took a position with them as soon as he left office.

[nosmokes]

3. It has a long way to go before it's repealed.

It will probably get a decent re-write in the House, But in the Senate where *Folds under feather pressure Miner's son Harry Reid* is in charge and his Nevada hand is stuck deeply in the industry pocket I wouldn't be getting my hopes up too high for any sort radical changes w/o lots of activism on our part. And it's waaaay past time to round file this antiquated legislation.