Miners, environmentalists clash on fees at hearing

RENO, Nev. - Miners and environmentalists clashed on the need for new federal mining fees at a congressional field hearing here Saturday.

Miners said any new fees could cost the West jobs by driving the industry overseas, but their critics said the fees are needed to deal with a host of environmental problems caused by mining.

About 100 people gathered for the hearing held by the House Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources to assess the impact of the fees on states and the mining industry. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., a panel member, conducted the hearing.

Russell Fields, president of the Nevada Mining Association, said any new fees must be enacted with great care because of slumping gold prices, which have reached 20-year lows in recent months.

Nevada saw a 32 percent decline in mining exploration expenditures in 1997 and any new fees could cause a further drop, he warned.

His group opposes an 8 percent federal net smelter royalty supported by environmentalists and prefers a net proceeds royalty of 2 percent or less. Mining companies currently pay no federal royalty for use of public lands.

"Any royalty is an added expense and will have a negative impact on mining and the communities in which mining takes place," Fields said.

"As opportunities in the United States are made less attractive because of more regulation and higher costs, the mining companies will leave for foreign venues," he added.

But Tom Myers, director of the Great Basin Mine Watch environmental group, argued for the royalty, saying it would have only a slight effect on mining jobs.

His group wants the royalty to go toward reclamation of abandoned mines and cleanup of improperly bonded mines.

Mining companies, not taxpayers, should be responsible for dealing with environmental problems caused by mining, Myers said.

"The answer (for rural counties) is not continued subsidized low costs of (mining) production; the answer is more diversification of the local economies," he said.

"The fastest growing rural Western regions are places where people want to live because of their beauty, not because of what they can extract from the earth."

Myers also defended an existing $100 annual claim maintenance fee that claimholders must pay, saying it only hurts speculators.

The Bureau of Land Management got about $30 million from the fee in 1998 to help protect public lands, he said.

Some state officials, including a representative of Gov. Kenny Guinn, urged the congressional panel to consider the needs of rural communities before taking action.

The mining industry employs about 13,000 people in Nevada, with an additional 45,000 jobs indirectly related to the industry, they said. Nevada is the nation's lead gold producer.

Members of the pro-mining group People for the USA placed a couple of signs at the meeting site, including one that read: "Congressman Gibbons. Please Save Our Jobs! Thank You!"

Gibbons opposes any new federal mining fees.

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