Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1995 TAG: 9510110048
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JESSICA MATHEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Why the embarrassment? Because under a law passed when Ulysses S. Grant was president, the federal government is forced to give away billions of dollars worth of gold, platinum and other hard-rock minerals. A mere claim brings indefinite rights to the minerals. If a claimant, usually a corporation, wants to buy the land, it may do so for a price - $2.50 or $5 per acre - set 123 years ago.
Under this law, federal agencies cannot balance the value of the land for mining against other potential uses, as they do for other industries. There is no royalty charged as there is for oil and gas, or for hard-rock minerals on private and state-owned land. There are no reclamation standards as there are for surface mining of coal. The clean air and water acts provide a degree of protection for those resources, but there is none for precious ground water.
Though the buyer does not owe a dime to the taxpayer, he can turn around and charge a hefty royalty to someone else for the rights he has just been given. Or he can sell the land for other purposes. Or he can mine and leave the cleanup to the ripped-off taxpayer.
There's more, but that's enough to establish that among the real and phony horror stories about the excesses of federal regulation and about fiscal irresponsibility, there is none that holds a candle to the basic protections the mining law fails to provide and the billions it pours into the coffers of this special interest.
Honestly phrased polls show an overwhelming majority backing reform - 82 percent nationwide and 83 percent in the West. The interesting question then is how such an affront can persist. The answer is a case study of what happens when a lot of people care a little and a few, with the necessary resources, care a lot. Anyone who questions the corrupting power of money in American politics need look no further.
If you had a sweet deal like this one, you'd do whatever it takes to preserve it. With a combination of carrot and stick, the mining industry has done just that, showering money where it's needed in Washington and threats back home.
Not counting individual contributions by company executives or money poured through the campaign finance law's soft money loophole, hard-rock PACs spent more than $17 million on House and Senate races between 1987 and 1994. That's a lot of money, but 10 times as much would have been a sound investment for the estimated $26 billion of minerals mined from public lands during those years and the additional $34 billion for which a patent was filed.
It's no surprise, but I suppose it's worth repeating that the money does its job. For all that members of Congress insist that campaign contributions do not ``buy'' their votes, it has been well documented that those the industry favors with its money are those who block reform.
Local pressure works too. However specious, industry claims of poverty find an audience. And though the resources being given away belong to Westerners as much as to all of us, it's easy to stir up resentment against anything having to do with the federal government and Western lands. No less a dedicated environmentalist than Arizonan Morris Udall caved to the threat of an industry-sponsored recall petition nearly 20 years ago. Honesty is all that separates Udall from today's members who abhor the mining law but toe the line. ``I may not have seen the light on this issue,'' he admitted, ``but I have felt the heat.''
For half a decade, the Senate has beaten back reform amendments by a whisker: 50-48 in 1990, 48-47 in '91, 51-46 this year. But repeated votes like this are not as close as they seem. Usually they mean that the winners have several more potential votes in their pockets. Vote after vote, they will logroll for whatever it takes, promise whatever they need to, to get them.
In this year's Republican-led craze for corporate giveaways and environmental rollbacks, the best that can be hoped for is not reform but an extension of the present moratorium on land sales. The one-year pause, which will expire in a few weeks, is an attempt to stanch the flood of patents filed since the industry began to see a few years ago that reform was only a matter of time. An estimated $40 billion of mineral sales has been gobbled up since 1993. If the moratorium - now deadlocked in House-Senate conference - fails, another $15 billion will be out the door.
One other mining amendment deserves attention, though it will be vetoed. It is the sham reform contained in the budget reconciliation act. More loophole than law, this bill imposes a negligible royalty, no environmental standards and no funds to clean up half a million abandoned mines.
Most egregiously, it makes a pretense of ending giveaway prices by charging ``fair market value for the surface'' of the land - as though voters are too stupid to notice the last three words. Land worth billions would now be sold for $200 per acre instead of $2.50. The bill is an insult to the constituents of every member who voted for it. Perhaps if enough of them hear about it, they will return the compliment.
Jessica Mathews is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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