Gold's in them thar hills; Jeff, Pete, push reform

| The New Mexican

6/24/2008 - 6/25/08

It was 1872: The United States not long before had taken territory from sea to shining sea, then had fought a civil war to keep the country together. The world out west was our oyster: There was land to be had for the making of fortunes — wide open spaces where hard, dangerous, dirty work might uncover treasure for the taking.

The president of our nation was the war hero Ulysses Grant — a willing captive, along with a pliable Congress, of Wall Street's robber barons.

Among their ill-gotten gains that year so long ago was a national mining law — a giveaway of public lands allowing mineral-rights owners to do as they wished with their claims. No royalties. No conservation. Just dig away.

In those days, the damage didn't amount to much — but good ol' American know-how soon asserted itself, with huge industrial hoses and steam drills gouging away entire hills. Today monstrous machines can make short work of a whole mountain and cart away the ore in the blink of an eye.

In the wake of the work of the mine companies — foreign-owned, as often as not — lie slag heaps, leaching poisons into the land and the water.

For all our nation's environmental progress, attempts at reforming the federal mining law have yielded only tiny changes.

The 19th-century statute was bad enough in the 20th century — and the 21st century is seeing a resurgence of mine-company ambitions. Copper, simultaneously the source of New Mexico fortunes and the bane of our state's socioeconomic existence, could be king one more time, enriching a few of its subjects for the short term before either market forces or played-out mines get us forsaken once again.

And gold: Down in the Capitan Mountains, folks are nervous about a major operation to extract that legendary mineral in modern-industrial fashion. The Lincoln County board of commissioners last week issued a call for mine-law reform, which has spent decades on Congress' back burner.

The House of Representatives last year approved a bill requiring royalties and offering a start toward meaningful environmental standards. But the Senate, whose boss is mine-minion Harry Reid of Nevada — yes, the Silver State — is sitting on such reform.

On Monday, New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson, along with his Oregon and Washington counterparts, sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, asking for action.

The chairman of that committee is New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman, long an advocate of fresh mining measures. The ranking minority-party member is New Mexico's Pete Domenici. Last year, Domenici allowed as how it might be time to talk about mine reform. Their panel has entertained testimony on the bill.

Now it's time for action.

Bingaman and Domenici should force the hand of Sen. Reid with their committee's version of the House bill.