More than 140,000 abandoned hardrock mines scatter federal lands in the Western U.S. Their cleanup could be getting easier, thanks to a bill that cleared its final hurdle in Congress this week.
According to a Government Accountability Office report from 2020, more than 60% of the abandoned mines pose risks to safety or the environment, such as by leaching toxic chemicals like arsenic and lead into water. Plus, there could be nearly 400,000 more abandoned mines that government officials haven’t documented.
Yet cleaning up all these sites in the future would cost the government billions more dollars. Environmental nonprofits and state agencies have said they want to do more to help. But doing so isn’t attractive. It costs a lot of money and, most significantly, rules hold them responsible for the pollution old mining companies left behind.
“Historically, the fear of litigation and liability that might trail a would-be ‘good Samaritan’ has kept us from doing a lot of that clean-up work,” said Chris Wood, the president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, which works to remediate mine tailings to improve water quality.
Wood said the organization faces obstacles to do as much cleanup as it would like because of the liability concerns. He’s been working to remove these hurdles for two decades.
Finally, this week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill called the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act, which the Senate had already passed this summer. It creates a pilot program under the Environmental Protection Agency that allows nonprofits, governments or landowners to clean up old mines without taking on the risk.
“So, we can do the work, and as long as we did what we said we did, and we didn't make it worse – we, in fact, made it better – we can walk away,” Wood said. "That's what makes this legislation so significant.”
The pilot starts with 15 projects over the next 7 years.
The legislation was spearheaded by Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Sen. Martin Heinrich (R-N.M). Bipartisan lawmakers from Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona were among other co-sponsors of the bill. It now heads to President Biden's desk.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
