Dec. 10—A decadeslong effort to make it easier for “good Samaritan” groups to clean up the thousands of abandoned hard rock mines that dot the American West is a signature away from a major milestone.
The Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act — which would make it easier for organizations such as state agencies and nonprofits to remediate former mine sites — passed the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday, after securing unanimous Senate support in July. The legislation now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.
“With today’s passage, we’ve now cleared one of the final hurdles preventing these groups from helping to protect the land, water, fish, and wildlife our communities rely on,” U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement celebrating its passage.
The bill would create a pilot permitting program to streamline cleanup efforts at abandoned mine sites, allowing organizations to improve water and soil quality while providing resources to comply with federal oversight requirements.
While cleanup of abandoned coal mines is funded by a tax on the industry, there is no comparable funding stream to remediate abandoned hard rock sites such as the copper and turquoise mines that were once common in New Mexico. Many of these sites have been abandoned for decades, and without a company to hold responsible, environmental liability can shift to outside organizations.
Some Western lawmakers have been pushing since the 1990s to make it easier to clean up these sites. Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, said in a statement Tuesday that good Samaritan organizations have tried to clean up abandoned mine sites, only to be halted by legal hurdles. The bill, he said, will ensure cleanup groups aren’t held responsible for preexisting pollution.
“This victory belongs to every single person who rolled up their sleeves to fix this longstanding injustice, and I’d like to thank those who have carried the baton to get us to this point,” Heinrich said.
Heinrich and Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, sponsored the version that passed the Senate on July 31, and it had similarly bipartisan support in the House.
“This bipartisan bill … would address the significant environmental challenge posed by tens of thousands of abandoned hard rock mining sites by creating a pathway for Good Samaritan entities to receive the legal assurances they need to move ahead with remediation of historic mine pollution,” Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, a co-sponsor, said during Tuesday’s House floor debate.
“Clearly, there’s a problem to be solved here, and, too often, in this body of Congress, we create more problems than actual solutions,” said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, another co-sponsor. “This bill is fundamentally different for the way that it tries to approach and address this issue.”
A similarly disparate mix of organizations backed the bill. In addition to backing from the Western Governors’ Association and National Congress of American Indians, it garnered support from hunting and fishing groups, conservation advocates and mining associations alike.
“This is a victory for common sense,” Chris Wood, president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, said in a statement provided by Heinrich’s office. “Senators Heinrich and Risch took a bipartisan approach to a non-partisan issue. Clean water is a basic human right.”
“I look forward to the President signing this bipartisan bill into law allowing for responsible, much-needed land and water remediation efforts,” Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, said in the news release.