Mine cleanup bill sponsored by New Mexico Senator passes House, expected to become law

A bill to make cleaning up abandoned hard rock mines easier is expected to become law after the House of Representatives passed it Tuesday.

The bipartisan Good Samaritan bill, sponsored by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., would reduce the liability for nonprofits or other groups cleaning up abandoned hard rock mines. The bill would pilot a new permitting process with 15 abandoned mine sites, allowing entities who don’t own the abandoned mine to clean up the site without being responsible for cleaning up all of the pollution at a site.

“We’ve been doing abandoned mine cleanups for 10 years now. It’s just that we’ve kind of been doing them with one hand tied behind our backs,” said Corey Fisher, public lands policy director for nonprofit Trout Unlimited.

The bill passed the Senate in July and is expected to be signed into law by President Joe Biden. It has taken more than 20 years to reach a president’s desk.

“I am grateful for President Biden’s support of the bill, and his signature will allow Good Samaritans to get to work,” Heinrich said in a statement.

Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, first proposed a version of the Good Samaritan bill in 1999. He hoped Montana could clean up a mine site from the 1800s that contaminated Corbin Creek, which is still on Montana’s list of impaired waters, bill cosponsor Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., said during debate on the House floor Tuesday.

“Across these multiple decades of debate, abandoned hard rock mines have continued to send mercury, arsenic, lead and other toxic materials into our rivers,” Lee said.

There was one voice of dissent on the debate floor. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., was concerned the bill could allow corporations to seek superfund exemptions from the Environmental Protection Agency, especially under the incoming Donald Trump administration.

“I fear that Congress is opening up a Pandora’s box,” Pallone said.

Abandoned mines in NM

Mines are divided into two categories: coal and everything else. Those that are everything else are called hard rock mines. In New Mexico, that category includes silver, gold, lead, manganese, iron and uranium mines.

Leftover mining materials can pose health issues, while ground that becomes unstable after mining is a safety issue.

New Mexico has approximately 26,000 known abandoned mine features, but it’s difficult to know exactly how many abandoned mines are out there, according to Lloyd Moiola, Environmental Manager for the state’s Abandoned Mine Land program.

Funding for the Abandoned Mine Land program primarily comes from a law that taxes coal production, said Program Manager Mike Tompson, so the money has to be spent first on reclaiming and safeguarding coal mines. Safeguarding hard rock mines is a secondary effort, and the money can’t be used to clean up hard rock mines.

Safeguarding is the only way money is spent on the hard rock mines. It includes things that reduce the risk of someone falling into an abandoned mine, like building safety enclosures, gates and backfilling.

“The majority of the coal problems, and the majority of the funding, is on the East Coast,” Tompson said. “Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky — they get quite a bit of money to address their coal problems, and they have many. They don’t have many hard rock problems. In the West — California, Nevada and Arizona, Colorado — they have even more hard rock problems than we have.”

The federal government provides some money to address hard rock mines, but it is not enough to accomplish environmental remediation for mines in New Mexico. Instead, the Bureau of Land Management is working on an inventory of the abandoned hard rock mine features in New Mexico.

So far, BLM has inventoried approximately 43 of the 251 mining districts in the state, Moiola said.

“It’s a cyclical thing, because we can’t make the case that we need the money, because there’s no money to do the inventory to make the case,” Tompson said.

The state Legislature did fund a new program to find out the number of abandoned uranium mines that are not under federal jurisdiction.

Heinrich also championed a provision in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to establish an abandoned hard rock mine reclamation program in the Department of the Interior.

“Congress is not fully funding it right now, so we’re hoping, if that becomes fully funded, we should receive quite a bit of money in New Mexico to do hard rock reclamation, which could include environmental remediation,” Moiola said.

The EPA might not choose a New Mexico site for the Good Samaritan bill’s pilot program, but the bill could create momentum for more abandoned mine cleanup.

Trout Unlimited plans to pitch sites for the pilot program.

“Hopefully, we show success and build enthusiasm around cleaning up abandoned mines,” Fisher said. “And show that it’s not just something that’s good for the environment and helping create healthier communities, but it’s really a job generator in rural communities.”