Is it his impending retirement that's motivating Sen. Pete Domenici to talk about reforming the General Mining Law of 1872? Now that he's not seeking re-election, he certainly won't need the hardrock mineral lobby's support, but maybe he recognizes the need for reform regardless. We're glad to hear it — and we'll be even gladder if he actually supports real mine-law reform.

When he was chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Domenici was notably quiet on the topic; mustn't offend fellow Western Republicans beholden to the mining interests, must we?

He's still ranking minority member of that committee, however, and that counts for something — especially when his fellow New Mexican, Democrat Jeff Bingaman, is chairman.

The two could prove powerful enough to actually chip away, perhaps crack, the monolithic control the mining industry — national and foreign — has on America's public lands.

Signed into law by Ulysses S. Grant, federal mining law has seen next to no changes during decades when hardrock operations evolved from relatively light digging in wide open spaces to industrialized gouging of increasingly crowded land now recognized for its fragility.

Now, as then, federal land managers may not deny permits regardless of the environmental damage a hardrock-mining operation might do in its quest for gold, copper, silver or uranium. Land and water alike are at risk; pollution remains a right that comes with a mining claim.

For all the damage they do, the mine companies pay not a cent in royalties to the federal government. Coal and oil extractors do; hardrock mines don't.

And until Congress imposed a moratorium on the practice, in the 1990s, mine companies could turn public land into private property for $5 an acre.

As for reclamation of trashed lands, the so-called "Superfund" for cleanup remains woefully inadequate. Reclamation standards set by the Interior Department have been intentionally vague.

Mineral prices once again are rising — and with them, mining claims: From around 200,000 early this century to nearly 400,000 today. Many of those claims lie within five miles of Grand Canyon and Death Valley national parks. Arches, in Utah's part of the Four Corners, and Yosemite in California face similar perils. As for Yellowstone, it's already surrounded by mines of one disastrous level or another, and facing further threats.

This latest rash of claims clearly has caught the attention not only of longtime mine supporter Domenici and the less than strenuously reformist Bingaman, but also the Senate's majority leader, Harry Reid of mined-to-the-max Nevada.

Reid leads half of a Congress woefully unable to guide our country out of its Iraq irresolution. He and his fellow Democrats badly need some kind of accomplishment on behalf of the people as the 2008 election season approaches.

Mine-law reform would be the kind of achievement that would demonstrate toughness toward the corporate interests who brought us eight years of George W. Bush.

This isn't lost on Domenici, who should see, in his last 15 months in office, the legacy he can build for future generations of New Mexicans and for all Americans. And here he is, brow furrowed over the ancient state of mining law, saying something must be done.

Indeed it must. In the House of Representatives, Democrat Nick Rahall of West Virginia has been trying for 20 years to put hard-rock royalties, land-purchase limits and land-recovery requirements on the federal statute books.

Rahall's bill, co-sponsored by New Mexico's Rep. Tom Udall, is the model Domenici and Bingaman should follow. How hard can it be to copy off the essential parts of that measure, put it in Senate bill form and begin hearings?

The mines, as their advertisements used to say, still mean a lot to New Mexico and the rest of the West. But the West means a lot to the mines, también. Big mining must realize that the days of ravaging the land must give way to responsible corporate citizenship.

We're encouraged that Pete Domenici might be thinking that way. So Jeff, what are you waiting for?