The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Goldminers in the Mojave Desert Who are Angry at the Government

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. You don`t have to go very far these days to find someone complaining that the federal government is messing up his life. The latest Americans to take up that cry are a rare breed whose lives smack of the romance of the Old West -- the prospectors for gold in the western hills. They believe Washington is about to drive them out of business.

We first heard about the story in a report from the Mojave Desert, a hundred miles northeast of Los Angeles. The furor has intensified since then and spread to the East. Here`s a report on the feelings of small miners by Christopher Chow of Public Television Station KCET, Los Angeles:

CHRISTOPHER CHOW: Since the days of the fortyniners the romance of prospecting, the dream of striking it rich with a gold mine, has drawn many a would be miner to the Mojave Desert. In 1893 the Mojave was the scene of a small gold rush dotted with mining camps, and even today there`s still gold under the sagebrush.

Of the estimated four million individual mining claims in the United States, some of the productive ones are here in this region known as Golar Gulch. Many of the claims are held by city folks, people who might be tool engineers or masseuses in Los Angeles who come out here on weekends to work their mines. For others, like Keith O`Hara, a big man who looks like a goldminer, it`s their only source of livelihood. O`Hara has a placer mine, which means he takes loose gravel and rocks and sand and shovels them onto a drywasher, a device that sifts the material, separating the gold particles from sand and gravel.

Miners often work alone, but sometimes other miners help him shovel and pan for gold.

KEITH O`HARA, Goldminer: If you can get money out of the ground, it`s a good way to make a living.

CHOW: Is there really gold here?

O`HARA: There is a great deal of gold here. You`re standing on some right now.

CHOW: How much have you gotten out?

O`HARA: One rule in goldmining is that (laughing) you don`t tell people how much gold you get out of the ground. In times when gold was thirty-five dollars an ounce, people would stockpile it, you know, in the hope that the price of gold would go up -- and it has. Sometimes we stockpile and sometimes we sell.

CHOW: But there`s a profit to be made here.

O`HARA: There is a profit to be made, definitely.

CHOW: O`Hara says he makes a living at mining, but his livelihood appears to be threatened by new mining regulations proposed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Miners like O`Hara are mining on public federal lands. Some of the proposed regulations will require miners or prospectors to file a notice of intent to hold mining claims, to file with the government a plan of operations and to post a $100,000 insurance bond for work that will call for significant disturbance of the environment, such as dynamiting rocks or digging tunnels.

O`HARA: I agree with practically every miner that I`ve talked to, and they all agree that it will wipe out the small miner in the United States. It will be impossible to mine.

DORIS DIETEMAN, Goldminer: All of a sudden we have some experts who at their whim and will are going to decide whether I can mine or not. Now, for the small miner that`s restrictive financially and it`s restrictive because of time. They can hold me up from work for four months almost. Now, in the winter that could be disastrous. We have to work when the ground is dry, and we have to work when the weather is with us. And if we had to wait four months for someone to decide whether we could work or not, that would be very difficult.

CHOW: Many small miners have banded together in the Western Mining Council to lobby against the BLM`s proposed regulations. The Bureau of Land Management denies any intention of getting rid of small miners. No one knows exactly how the regulations will be interpreted or enforced. For example, no one knows for sure if the miners will have to fill in all the holes on their claims, a major operation for some whose diggings go eighty- five feet deep. But the fact remains that for the first time in 104 years the federal government has the power to regulate and police the prospector or the miner. Federal law gives the Bureau of Land Management the power to train and maintain an armed force of rangers, with powers of arrest, and search and seizure without warrant or a process.

JIM LEHRER: A little history and some perspective are needed before we pick up where that part of the story leaves off. The public lands, as they are called, where those prospectors do their work, are mostly deserts and mountain areas. They remained the property of the government after the big migration west because the settlers didn`t want them. They understandably preferred to own and live on land that was fertile, flat and good for farming. So through the years the rest of it just sat there. The only real governmental action taken until recently was Congress` decision in the 1880`s to designate parts of it as national parks; later, other areas as national forests. The rest of it was handed over to the Department of Interior`s Bureau of Land Management.

The Bureau was to dispose of it in an orderly and beneficial way to further encourage the development of the West, but most of it still belongs to the federal government -- eighty-seven percent of the State of Nevada alone is federally owned and controlled public land.

Now, back to the miners. Until the new regulations take effect, these public lands are open for goldmining free of charge. All gold found and extracted remains the property of the miner, and as long as $100 worth of work is done on a mine within a year the claim remains active and is considered staked. But last year Congress passed something called the Bureau of Land Management Organic Act; it told the Bureau to manage the land. The Bureau issued the regulations the miners don`t like, and now we`re ready to proceed from there. First, with James Monroe, Assistant Director of the Bureau of Land Management and a native of Nevada. Mr. Monroe, why does the Bureau feel these new regulations are necessary?

JAMES MONROE: These regulations have been in progress or in some form of consideration for a number of years. The Mining Law of 1872 grants the Secretary of the Interior the authority to regulate the surface activities, and last year when Congress passed what was called the Organic Act -- literally, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act -- they said that these lands shall remain in federal ownership -- all the public lands that are under our jurisdiction, some 470 million acres -- and that they shall be managed on the principle of multiple use and sustained yield. There`s a very strong section in the bill that says that the Secretary, through the Bureau of Land Management, shall manage the use, occupancy and development of those lands.

LEHRER: And that includes mining.

MONROE: That includes all uses, all activities that carry out. We`re also, in another section of the bill, to protect areas from degradation that have wilderness potential -- 5,000 acres that are roadless in character and with wilderness characteristics.

LEHRER: All right. Just so I understand, now: when do they go into effect?

MONROE: We won`t go with the final rulemaking until sometime this year, and they would not be effective for this current field season. That would be impossible even to enforce -- we don`t have the money or the manpower to go out on the ground this summer and try to enforce anything of this magnitude.

LEHRER: So it would be after this summer.

MONROE: They might go into effect this fall, and we would have the winter season to work with the miners and our own people, so that they`re accustomed to just what`s required and we would hope fully phase in the implementation.

LEHRER: Let`s talk about what they must be accustomed to in terms of what`s going to be required. What about this $100,000 bond; why is that?

MONROE: A bond is an enforcement tool. You tell someone he has to reclaim what he`s done in tearing up the landscape, and if you have no way of enforcing it or no way of paying for the cost of the work, then it`s not done and it leaves a continued scar on the landscape.

LEHRER: We need to make clear that everybody who would get a permit to mine does not have to put up a $100,000 bond, is that right? It depends on the kind of thing they`re going to mine and what kind of work they`re going to do.

MONROE: The way we`re looking at it now, we would have more of a punishment to fit the crime, so to speak. The bond would cover the extent of the mining operation and the extent of the reclamation work that`s necessary. We`re looking at alternative systems, too, where no bond would be required at all.

LEHRER: All right. We heard what the miners had to say and what Mr. Chow, the reporter from KCET said, which was in effect that this is going to put the small miner out of business. Did you know that going in? Is this one of your purposes, or just one of those unfortunate side effects, or what?

MONROE: I don`t think it`s either of the latter. I don`t think it will -- we didn`t intend to put small miners out of business or anyone out of business, and I don`t think it will have that effect. Certainly it`s governmental regulation, but it`s regulation that`s mandated by Congress to protect the surface of land that belongs to you and to me and to the miners and others as well.

LEHRER: But it is going to put some miners out of business, is it not?

MONROE: It could, I suppose. So could the price of eggs that are supported by the Agriculture Department.

LEHRER: All right; now, you talked about the damage to the environment, and this is one of the things that you are now mandated to take care of and this is the reason you want to impose these regulations. What kind of damage are you talking about? You brought some slides along; let`s take a look at them and you can tell us what we`re talking about here.

MONROE, All right. One of the slides that we see here is a phosphate road that would be used in prospecting and developing phosphate resources. The bulldozer has simply gone right up the side of the hill there; the sidecasting of material has caused damage to some of the trees that you can see in the background, in the center of the picture. Disruption, no careful planning for erosion control or what may be on the ground living there -the wildlife. Congress has also passed rare and endangered species legislation. This road here could very conceivably be in an area that is the last remaining habitat of a rare or endangered species.

LEHRER: All right. This is some plowing, right?

MONROE : This is some jade exploration and development production activity in one of our western states, and you see the helterskelter road pattern; there`s probably a better way of doing it.

LEHRER: That`s an aerial shot, isn`t it`

MONROE: Yes. One of our people took it, I believe in Wyoming, and it just shows the extensive activity that goes on out there.

LEHRER: Now a shot of some zeolite.

MONROE: That`s right. You see here where part of a knoll or a hillside has just been ripped off. There`s no evidence of current mining activity in this picture; it`s just left to lay. We feel that some of that should be reclaimed in some way.

LEHRER: And you`re also concerned about abandoned mines like this.

MONROE: Right, we have people -- most notably, children riding motorbikes or off-road vehicles -- who have literally fallen into those and been killed. We had two of our own girl employees a couple of years ago in Colorado who lost control of their government truck and ran off into one of these things and just barely got out before the truck went to the bottom.

LEHRER: In short, and finally, the new regulations are designed to first of all prevent this kind of thing if you can, and if it does happen, to correct it.

MONROE: To manage it through the approval of a development plan. The miner might say, "I want to build my road here." We`ll say, "Look, there`s a better way in another area."

LEHRER: Like this abandoned mine here -- that particular one is in California; under your procedures, that mine shaft would have to be blocked off in some way.

MONROE: It would have to be blocked up, and it could be done very inexpensively, with less cost, I would assume, than it took to dig the hole.

LEHRER: Mr. Monroe, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Changes in Bureau of Land Management regulations affecting small miners would also affect large mining companies. The lobby for their interests is the American Mining Congress, whose spokesman tonight is Howard Edwards, a vice president of the Anaconda Mining Company. Mr. Edwards, how would these proposed regulations affect big mining companies like yours?

HOWARD EDWARDS: Large mining companies today are environmentally responsible. We worked with the U.S. Forest Service three years ago when they implemented reasonable mining regulations, and while every thing hasn`t been perfect with those regulations they have worked, and the Forest Service has the tools that they need to impose reasonable environmental requirements on mining operations.

MacNEIL: What`s unreasonable? Do I detect that`s what you mean, these regulations are unreasonable?

EDWARDS: The Bureau of Land Management has gone a lot farther in their type of regulation than the Forest Service did, and we were at a loss to know why they were not willing to follow a pat tern that has already been established and which works.It almost looks like interagency rivalry that made them think that they need a tougher type of regulation than already exists.

MacNEIL: Do you believe, as a representative of a large miner, that these regulations will actually push small miners out of business?

EDWARDS: Yes, I do. Mine safety regulations initiated in the coal mining industry a few years ago had the effect of closing down two-thirds of all the underground coal mines in the country, and those were generally the mines operated by small operators; the same type of thing will happen with these regulations.

MacNEIL: What is the interest of big companies in small miners?

EDWARDS: I think more than the interest of big companies we`re looking at the interests of this nation in getting the materials that we need to fuel our economy. If we want to buy a car or any thing else that`s made out of metals, we have to know that we`re going to have these materials furnished at reasonable prices. The small mining community do two things: number one, they produce many of the materials that are needed in our economy that are not produced by the large mining companies. You talk about diatomaceous earth, or antimony, or cobalt or uranium, a lot of other minerals are produced by small miners. But in addition, maybe even more significant, is that almost all of the new discoveries of minerals in this country are made by individuals or small mining companies.

MacNEIL: So these aren`t just eccentrics, like that gentleman we saw in California, eccentrics or romantics who don`t want to live in the twentieth century; they`re performing a real economic function in the mining industry by prospecting.

EDWARDS: It`s not only an economic function, it`s a public service to this country.

MacNEIL: I see. Thank you; we`ll come back. Jim?

LEHRER: One of the environmental groups concerned with mining practices on public lands is the Sierra Club. John McComb, of their Southwest Chapter in Tucson, Arizona, is with us tonight in the studio of KLVX Public Television in Las Vegas, Nevada. Mr. McComb, do these new regulations suit you environmentalists?

JOHN McCOMB: We view them as necessary; we think they`re a desirable step in the right direction. They could be improved, but they don`t go all the way towards correcting the environmental problems created by mining. The mining industry has enjoyed unprecedented favoritism on our public lands. Their legal status is that they`re more important than any other use of those public lands; we simply don`t agree with that. That stems from this antiquated 1872 Mining Law. These particular regulations are a small step designed to bring that industry into the twentieth century, and it appears they`re going to do that screaming and kicking.

LEHRER: What else do you think should be done, if these don`t go far enough?

McCOMB: The fundamental change that has to be made is a revision of the 1872 Mining Law itself, one that makes the presumption that mining is the most important use of our public lands.

LEHRER: Does it bother you, as an environmentalist, that this is causing problems for the small miner?

McCOMB: I really don`t agree with the people that think it`s going to cause unnecessary problems. The regulations really are very similar to the ones the Forest Service has had in effect for two years. They have worked moderately well, although they`re not completely enforced yet. I disagree with Mr. Edwards in the sense that there`s that much difference between the two.

LEHRER: Mr. Edwards says it`s very much in the national interest and in the public interest to encourage mining, and these regulations are going to inhibit that in a very serious way. You disagree with that, but how do you respond to that?

McCOMB: I`ve looked at the regulations and listened to some of the criticisms that various miners have of the regulations, and if I had to try to understand those criticisms, they come from the fact that these people have had no regulation whatsoever -- unlike the timber industry or people drilling for oil and gas, or even ranchers. Those people have to get permits from the federal government, sometimes even undergo competitive bidding to get the right to use public lands, they have to post bonds; it hasn`t put them out of business. The mining industry is free of all of that and they`re complaining because we`re suggesting they make a small step towards putting them on an equal footing with other industrial users of public lands.

LEHRER: All right, Mr. McComb; thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Also in Las Vegas is State Senator Richard Blakemore, who has many small miners as his constituents there. He also manages an airport and runs a local flying service. Good evening, Senator. How are your constituents reacting to the proposed regulations?

RICHARD BLAKEMORE: I think if I really told you, it would probably scare you to death. I think a few of them are getting ready to shoot.

MacNEIL: What do you mean by that, Sir?

BLAKEMORE: They`re very disturbed. I find it difficult to understand why we`re having a furor over the Organic Act, which the Bureau of Land Management has been pushing for a great number of years now. They`ve finally managed to squeak it through Congress, and now the fat`s in the fire; I don`t know what will be the upshot of the thing. Actually, as far as I view it, the Act is unconstitutional in its entirety. I don`t take the view that, well, this portion of it`s bad, or that portion of it`s bad. I have a picture of it in front of me here, and if you can define this gobblety-gook without being a Philadelphia lawyer, I`ll put in with you.

MacNEIL: You believe that the states should control the publicly owned land, is that correct?

BLAKEMORE: No, I take issue about the argument of the antiquated document. Well, I have another document here, and it`s rather old, too. It`s called the U.S. Constitution; and we just passed out a resolution out of the legislature of both houses of our legislature that one of the sections says, "Whereas a review of the historical evidence concerning a property clause of the United States Constitution, Article Four, leads to the conclusion that the framers of the Constitution contemplated all public lands would be disposed of and did not intend to confer upon Congress the power to retain permanently any unappropriated, unreserved public lands."

MacNEIL: What is this going to do to the small miners in your state, Senator?

BLAKEMORE: I`m afraid that you have to look to the past before you can look into the future. And I believe the gentleman from Anaconda would concur, there`s never been any large deposit of anything found that has been vital to the industry and to the well-being of the United States that wasn`t first found by a small miner. And that`s really the explorational arm of the big miner; the big miner is just not geared to that type of thing.

MacNEIL: Was it news to you to hear Mr. Monroe of the Bureau of Land Management say that this $100,000 bond would not apply to all small miners?

BLAKEMORE: Yes. I find that there`s a great credibility gap between the Bureau of Land Management and the people of Nevada, and I would like to quote one brief paragraph from an editorial last Monday, the Washington delegate; this was the delegate that was in Elko, Nevada, listening to the complaints of the miners. The Washington delegate said, "The comments presented at several public hearings would be compiled and shuffled by bureaucrats in Washington. But," he conceded, "the official who will sign the final regulations will not even take time to read the regulations themselves, much less the comments of the people being regulated." And for Mr. Monroe`s edification, that`s from his home town, Elko, Nevada.

MacNEIL: Are you serious, or are you just talking facetiously, Senator, when you say that people are mad enough to start a shooting war out your way over this?

BLAKEMORE: I`m not being facetious. I`ve been very, very, very concerned about this over the past four or five years. You know, we have been also having a small disagreement with the Bureau of Land Management over cattle on the public domain, and my concern is that those that perhaps live in that back country of Nevada -- what I call the real Nevada -- might have been pushed into a corner where they may start shooting, and that would indeed be a tragedy.

MacNEIL: Thank you, Sir. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes. Mr. Monroe, first back to you. You`ve got several things; first of all, Mr. Edwards said that you people are in some kind of a toughness contest with the Forestry Department.

MONROE: I was glad to see Howard`s endorsement of the Forest Service regulations, because one of our objectives is to get as closely parallel to what they`re trying to do on as very similar land as we can. We recently published and sent down to Howard and others a spread sheet comparing our original rulemaking on this, the Forest Service rulemaking, and then the changes that we have under consideration; it draws the parallelism very close.

LEHRER: All right. Senator Blakemore just had some interesting comments, too, about the fact that this decision is going to be made by somebody here in Washington who isn`t even going to read the comments from all these hearings and the procedures you`re going through.

MONROE: That`s very possible. The Bureau of Land Management certainly can`t sign or issue these regulations. They can only be issued by an officer of the Department of the Interior, the office of the Secretary who has been nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. That gentleman will probably be the Secretary or one of his assistant secretaries and they likely might take some time on this one. It`s been very controversial.

LEHRER: But in effect the Bureau would give them a recommendation.

MONROE: We`ll give them a recommendation, we`ll give them briefings, all the documentation will be available to them; and on this one it`s been so emotional and so controversial they may take more time than normal.

LEHRER: All right. Gentlemen, the broader question here -these are public lands, they are, as Mr. Monroe said earlier, owned by all of us -- I guess the question boils down to what the public benefit should be, what the purpose of the federal management of these public lands should be. Mr. Edwards, I take it you feel that one of the primary interests should be to help the mining interests of this country, is that correct?

EDWARDS: I`m not saying it`s to help the mining interests; it is really to help the economy be able to have the materials it needs to operate with. We find that the greatest potential for the discovery of minerals today is not in the eastern states, but it happens to be in the areas of the West -- the mountainous and the desert areas -- where the conditions that set up the mountains also were the geological conditions that deposited the mineral. And the western states and Alaska is the great treasure house of this country, and we`ve got to have access to those areas.

LEHRER: But would that, in your opinion, override what I guess are competing interests -- the interests for safety, the interests for protecting the environment?

EDWARDS: Oh, no. In the extraction of these minerals we have to, in this day and age and this point in history, be aware of the needs to protect safety and to protect the environment. There`s no reason why this can`t be done. But this proposed regulatory scheme would instill types of delays and burdens that would make it impossible for the industry to function adequately.

LEH RER: Mr. McComb, where would you place the number one priority of federal land management -- at least, the public lands?

McCOMB: It`s a very difficult question to answer. Public lands meet a wide variety of needs, and one of them is production of minerals. But that need isn`t the number one priority on every parcel of public lands. There are frequently other needs that are more important. On specific parcels and in a general sense we want to do what we can to protect the environment where there is mining.

LEHRER: All right. Robin?

MacNEIL: Let`s try and figure out in the last few minutes what kind of a compromise might solve this thing. Is there a compromise implied in what Mr. Monroe said at the beginning, Mr. Edwards, that small miners would not all be expected to pay $100,000 as a bond against repairing the environment, but only an amount proportionate to the damage they might be going to make? Would that solve the problem?

EDWARDS: That would help solve the problem. Another idea would be that for certain types of exploration where the disturbance of the surface is minimal not to have a requirement for a plan of operations and a plan of reclamation, but just simply make it unlawful to leave the area without cleaning it up and restoring it.

MacNEIL: That`s for the kind of prospector who`s going around with a hammer and that sort of thing and making small holes.

EDWARDS: Yes. Even where you take a drill rig but don`t significantly disturb the surface. And the other area would be simply to follow the format established by the Forest Service, and Mr. Monroe indicates that maybe the BLM is willing to move in that direction; it might not solve all the problems, but it would solve quite a few of them.

MacNEIL: Senator Blakemore in Las Vegas, does that sound like a reasonable sort of compromise to you, for small miners` interests?

BLAKEMORE: Again, I would have to say that I don`t believe that they`re legally here to begin with. That would be a beginning or a show of faith on the part of the Bureau of Land Management. However, local control is really, in my view, the answer. We`re having decisions made way back there in Malfunction Junction by people that have no idea or no concept of what is really going on. I would have a little difficulty solving any of your problems back there if I were out here.

MacNEIL: Let`s give the gentleman in Malfunction Junction the last word here. Mr. Monroe, do either of these -- especially Mr. Edwards` -- compromises make any sense to the Bureau of Land Management?

MONROE: Yes, I think in part at least Howard Edwards has described what we call "casual use" in the rulemaking, and certainly the guy with the pick or that person who would not cause a significant disturbance isn`t going to have to file an extensive plan; but we need to know where he is, when he`s going to be out there, and so it`s a one-sheet document.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Well, we know where we are, and we have to leave. Thank you very much, all of you. Thank you, Senator Blakemore and Mr. McComb in Las Vegas, and Mr. Monroe in Washington. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Thank you, Mr. Edwards. Jim Lehrer and I will be back on Monday evening. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.