Oregon's salmon and taxpayers pay the price for mining
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Each summer, tens of thousands of Oregonians raft the Wild and Scenic
Rogue River and serenely float by the abandoned Almeda mine that has
been discharging carcinogenic heavy metals into the river for decades.
The toxic Almeda mine embodies all that is wrong with the 1872 Mining
Act that governs mining on public lands and waterways.
Here is
how it works: (1) A private mining interest files a mineral claim on
federal lands near a stream; (2) the mining interest extracts all the
valuable minerals (i.e. gold) from the public lands while paying no
royalties; (3) laws that would limit the environmental damage of the
mining are largely waived or ignored; (4) the mining interest packs up
and leaves; and (5) the taxpayer is left paying to clean up the cyanide,
arsenic and toxic metals left behind.
In the case of Almeda,
taxpayers have already shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in
unsuccessful efforts to keep the toxic stew out of the Rogue River and
still an ultimate solution is unknown. It may be that no amount of
public-funded remediation can repair the dig-and-run damage at Almeda.
The 2009 stimulus bill contained nearly $10 million for clean-up of
toxic mining waste on public lands in southwest Oregon, and that barely
scratches the surface of the problem.
For years salmon
enthusiasts, commercial fishing interests and taxpayer groups have
advocated for changes to the 1872 Mining Act. In 2007, Congress came
tantalizingly close when the U.S. House passed legislation to require
that taxpayers receive royalties from mineral extraction on public lands
while bolstering watershed protections. Unfortunately, the Senate
failed to act.
Due to concerns for water quality and salmon,
California enacted a moratorium in August on "suction dredging," which
is a form of mining that sucks up gravels and sediment from the bottom
of a stream, filters out gold, and then releases sediment into the
stream in a long, turbid plume.
With the California moratorium
in place, miners have their eyes set on the rivers and streams of
southwest Oregon. A California mining club with several thousand members
has identified a number of stretches of the Rogue River that its
members intend to mine this summer. A Washington state real-estate
developer has bought up nearly 24 river miles of claims on the Chetco
River and is encouraging California miners to bring their suction
dredges to Oregon.
What can protect the salmon and water quality
of Oregon's streams from this new gold rush?
The Obama
administration needs to enact a time-out on new mining claims on
salmon-bearing hot spots in southwest Oregon. Both of Oregon's senators,
as well as Gov. Ted Kulongoski, have asked the Department of the
Interior to withdraw the wild-and-scenic-designated Checto River and
other high-value salmon waterways from additional mining claims in the
Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area.
Ultimately, Congress must finish its
work and reform the outdated 1872 Mining Act so that water quality and
taxpayers don't always play second fiddle to private mining profits
extracted from public lands.
Lesley Adams is Rogue
riverkeeper for the Ashland-based Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center.
