ISSUE BRIEF: Help Clean Up Old Abandoned Mines in the West
Congress should help Good Samaritans to address legacy sites.
The Issue:
An estimated 400,000 historic abandoned or inactive hard rock mine sites exist in the West. Some are polluting the surrounding land, water and air. For many of these sites, some dating back over 125 years, there are no identifiable owners or operators. Where responsible parties can still be located, they often don’t have the resources to remediate the sites. Given the age of many inactive and abandoned mines, often no person or company remains that is legally responsible and has the resources to complete a needed cleanup.
Some individuals and companies are willing to clean up mine sites in whole or in part, even though they are not legally responsible. Unfortunately, our existing environmental laws create great risks of broad, long term, and very expensive liabilities for anyone who acts at a mine site, even if they act only as Good Samaritans.
Impacts on the West:
The threat of legal liability under federal environmental laws dissuades Good Samaritans from voluntarily cleaning up old mine sites. Thus, the West continues to be pockmarked with old mines and mining residues. Many of these sites continue to pollute the water, land and air.
Status of the Issue:
Recently, a growing coalition of state, local and federal policy-makers, environmental organizations and mining-industry groups, have reached a consensus: Congress provide liability protection to altruistic Good Samaritans who undertake the cleanup of abandoned mine pollution.
During the 109th Congress, Colorado Senators Ken Salazar (D) and Wayne Allard (R) introduced S. 1848, The Cleanup of Inactive and Abandoned Mines Act. S. 1848 encouraged mining companies, communities, non-profit organizations and individuals who had nothing to do with creating historic mine wastes — Good Samaritans — to voluntarily clean up historic mine sites as a public benefit. In return, it protected them from the risk of liability under federal and state environmental laws for those cleanup activities. This bill would apply to the cleanup of non-coal inactive and abandoned mines anywhere in the United States. S. 1848 was reported out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in the 109th Congress but never received floor consideration.
Senator Salazar has indicated he intends to introduce legislation similar to S. 1848 in the 110th Congress.
Solutions:
- Contact Senator Salazar and encourage him to re-introduce S. 1848.
- Once the legislation is introduced, contact your own U.S. Senator as well as Members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and let them know you support S. 1848 and other efforts to clean up abandoned mine sites.
- Contact your Representative in the House and urge them to support meaningful mine clean up legislation.
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