BLM bans new mining claims in protected desert land areas

By Jim Steinberg
San Bernardino Sun

The federal Bureau of Land Management wants to halt new mining claims from sprouting up on more than 1 million acres of land in the California desert.

On Wednesday the bureau will propose the temporary withdrawal of more than 1.3 million acres of the state’s National Conservation Lands from the “adverse impacts of mining.” The stoppage will take effect immediately until a thorough evaluation is completed in two years. The evaluation will decide if the ban will become permanent.

The proposal would not prohibit ongoing or future mining on valid existing claims, only new claims, according to bureau spokeswoman Martha Maciel.

The step is the first in a series to “more fully protect important areas within the California Desert Conservation Area,” Beth Ransel, the bureau’s California desert district manager, said in a statement.

The proposal targets four priority areas including 418,000 acres in the Amargosa Valley of Inyo and San Bernardino counties, the 95,000-acre Big Morongo area of San Bernardino County, the 590,000-acre Chuckwalla Bench/Dos Palmas area of Riverside County and 236,000 acres in the Eastern Sierra, Maciel said.

The proposal is to be published Wednesday in the Federal Register and initiates the temporary ban on new claims.

“This is something that is going to be welcomed by the conservation and scientific community, hunters and those areas where (desert land) tourism is important to their local economy,” said Frazier Haney, conservation manager for the Mojave Desert Land Trust in Joshua Tree.

Officials with the National Mining Association, the American Exploration and Mining Association and the Gold Prospectors Association of America could not be reached for comment.

This is the last step in the process of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, Haney said, which identified these lands as being vital to biological and cultural resources.

The plan took effect Sept. 14 and is intended to direct large-scale alternative energy projects away from sensitive lands.

Before making a final decision, the bureau will conduct studies to weigh considerations of the environment versus the impacts of taking these areas out of new mining development.

There also will be a series of meetings to consider information from the public and others on the mineral potential of the affected areas, according to the bureau.

Family fights government in land dispute near Area 51

Dispute over historic Groom Mine in Nevada pits Air Force against local family near Area 51

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5244593192001/

By Andrew Craft
FoxNews.com

Joe Sheahan is in the fight of his life to save his family’s Nevada mine from being swallowed up by the federal government's mysterious Area 51.

Technically, Sheahan’s family no longer even holds title to Groom Mine, which it owned for 130 years. The federal government took the deed through eminent domain after first offering the Sheahans $333,300, a price family lawyer James Leavitt called “embarrassingly low.” The family is fighting back in federal court, but if the Sheahans and Uncle Sam can’t agree on a value, it could wind up before a jury.

Possibly more interesting is what the federal government wants with a parched stretch of rural Nevada desert and an old mine that hasn’t been active in decades. The area is known for two of the feds’ most closely guarded secrets: nuclear testing and UFOs.

So far, the family has not been paid for the land. Initially, the family was sued by the federal government in September of 2015 in a complaint case of eminent domain. A few days later the government then filed a motion to take the over the property. Now, Appraisal reports are being exchanged in the discovery phase of the litigation. If the parties cannot reach a sufficient value for the land, the Sheahans are prepared to fight it in a jury trial.

The mine hasn’t been in full operation since 1954, but until fall of 2015 family members went out from time to time to blast for minerals. The 400 acres of land sits almost 6,000 feet above sea level with panoramic views of the surrounding Groom Mountain Range and borders the Nevada Test and Training Range, which includes Area 51. According to Sheahan, his family’s land had always been highly sought after by the U.S. Air Force base looking to expand its flight-testing range, “They told me the land was like a suit hemmed in too tight that needed to breathe, that’s why they want our land“ Sheahan said.

Sheahan told Fox News that Air Force officials started showing up unannounced on the property in the 40’s and 50’s, intimidating his grandparents. He said his family complained to the Air Force, but nothing happened. Then nuclear tests came without warning. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal archives, on Jan. 27, 1951, the Air Force detonated the first above-ground test on land next to the Groom Mine. Sheahan says his family wasn’t told about the test. “This bomb goes off, who do you call, who do you Google, there’s no one … those blasts did significant damage to the property, not only in radiation,” he said. Sheahan claims family members and mine workers suffered long-term radiation effects and says some livestock died from beta burns.

In the winter of 2014, government officials from the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force approached the Sheahan family about purchasing the property. At that time, Sheahan and other family members had never had the property appraised but he says the family thought offers of $2.4 million, $5.2 million, and $1.5 million from the Air Force were too low and so they rejected them. “We’re not going to sit down with those numbers at the table.” said Sheahan.

The Air Force confiscated the property on Sept. 16, 2015 through a federal court ruling in US District Court in Nevada. The family had three outside experts appraise the property after the seizure. Due to its proximity to Area 51 and the mineral rights to the land, each appraiser recognized the “unique value” of the property and came to the conclusion that the real value of the land was worth upwards of $44 million to $116 million dollars, Leavitt told Fox News.

In a statement on Nov. 9, 2016 obtained by Fox News, a prior commander at Nellis Air Force Base, Col. Thomas E. Dempsey explained the reason for seizing the land; “Over the years, technology has increased demand for the test and training range assets and the Air Force has developed infrastructure that directly supports range activities that cannot be replicated elsewhere.”

Leavitt is fighting to get the family just compensation, which real estate expert and Fox News Legal Analyst Bob Massi explains as “an objective understanding of the value of that property.”

Fox News reached out for a comment from Justice Department, which is representing the Air Force but was told by deputy press secretary Wyn Hornbuckle the department will not comment on pending litigation.

Freelance local investigative reporter Glen Meek has been researching the Sheahan case since the government seized the land and is making a documentary about the land dispute. He noted government’s unwillingness to provide answers and boiled it down to two major fundamental issues - individual rights and national security, saying “the government’s position is pretty much, the testing that’s going on there now is incompatible with civilians having private land in that area.”

The case is currently in discovery. Sheahan says he is a God-loving American and does not want to be portrayed as unpatriotic but wants his family to receive just compensation. Sheahan and Leavitt expect a late spring or early summer court date where a jury will decide on the matter of just compensation.

Government takes family's land near Area 51

Historic Groom Mine overlooking Area 51

By Glen Meek and Kyle Zuelke
Las Vegas Now

LAS VEGAS -- Private land overlooking the secret base at Area 51 has officially been taken from the owners and transferred to the United States Air Force.

Last month, the U.S. Air Force condemned the Groom Mine property when the family who owns it rejected a government buyout they felt was unjust.

The I-Team broke the story of the family's fight with the government.

The Sheahan family, which until now owned the mine, knew they faced an uphill fight. They also expected the government would probably take the land through eminent domain even though the Sheahan's owned it since Abe Lincoln was in the White House.

Now -- literally with the stroke of a pen -- a federal judge has turned the land over to the U.S. Air Force. The only part of the fight left for the Sheahan family now is compensation and what will happen to the equipment, buildings, even human remains, still at the site.

In the remote central Nevada desert, the Groom mine has been an island of private property surrounded by a vast government buffer zone. The buffer zone is patrolled by security troops to prevent people from getting a look at the secret test base at Groom Lake -- better known as Area 51.

The family who owns the mine overlooking Area 51 has been at odds with the air force, which condemned the property last month, after the family declined a $5.2 million buyout.

"I have a geologist friend who I took out there, who's just a buff, and he said it is literally almost priceless," said Barbara Sheahan, Groom Mine heir. "There is so much there, not only the ore which is in the ground that can be mined, but in all the intrinsic value of what's on the land."

What's on the land includes buildings, mining equipment and the remains of kin who worked the mine since the family acquired it in the 1870s.

There's also the question of indignities suffered by the family from nearby government testing including buildings strafed by military planes and radiation drifting downwind from above ground nuclear shots in 50s and 60s.

"This has been like I said a 60-plus year nothing short of criminal activity on the part of the federal government, the AEC, Black Ops, CIA and you can go on and on," said Joe Sheahan, Groom Mine heir.

On Sept. 16, federal Judge Miranda Du signed the order in the condemnation case giving possession of the Groom Mine property to the United States government. The Sheahan's have asked for a jury trial, but the issues will be limited to how much the air force must pay for the land and the disposition of the equipment and personal property left on the site.

"There's nothing fair, there's nothing anything remotely close to that involved in this process," said Joe Sheahan.

"But there never has been either, so it's nothing new. But we would like to change it at least to get our stuff out and be paid the value," Barbara Sheahan said.

The air force made its final, $5 million offer to the Sheahan family after concluding that the security and safety of defense testing in that area made private land ownership impossible.

It the condemnation case, the air force values the land at only $1.5 million.

The Sheahan's say it's worth much more than that considering the value of the minerals in the mine, the abuses the family has suffered over decades and the land' s historical significance.

Groups file lawsuit to stop mining near Grand Canyon

Suzanne Adams
Kingman Daily Miner


KINGMAN - New mining jobs in the Arizona Strip area may be put on hold. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Grand Canyon Trust and the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit Nov. 16 challenging a Bureau of Land Management permit for the Arizona 1 Mine.

"I'm very disappointed," said Mohave County Supervisor Gary Watson when he heard of the lawsuit. "It's absolutely absurd to me to lock up one of the richest deposits of uranium in the continental United States."

"As far as we're concerned we have all the necessary permits," said Denison Mines Corp. President and CEO Ron Hochstein, which owns the uranium mine. The company is not named in the lawsuit.

The mine is located 45 miles south of Fredonia and north of the Grand Canyon National Park. It is one of three mines owned by Denison within the boundary of a 1 million-acre area south and north of the Grand Canyon that the federal government is considering withdrawing from all mining for the next 20 years.

The company is still working on air quality permits for the other mining claims it has in the area. At this time, the federal government is not allowing any new mining claims in the area.

In their lawsuit, the conservation groups are claiming that the BLM failed to update a 1988 environmental assessment before issuing a permit to Denison in September.

"The mine has been down for more than a decade," said Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust. It would be prudent to re-evaluate the area, he said. New information has been collected about the area's groundwater and endangered species, and changes to BLM management policies have happened since the mine was closed in 1992, he said.

The conservation groups are also claiming that the BLM did not examine the validity of mine's claim and did not request a new plan of operation for the mine.

The conservation groups state in a news release that the mine's old operation plan expired when it was closed, and the company never established that there was a viable uranium deposit in the area, which is required in order to file a mining claim.

All claims pertaining to the mine have been kept in good standing since the mine was staked in the 1980s, Hochstein said.

The conservation groups have not requested a halt to any mining activity in the area, but they may in the future, Clark said.

Watson said he agrees that mining should not be allowed in the Grand Canyon National Park, but the Arizona 1 Mine is outside of park limits and Denison has met all of the permit qualifications.

According to company's Web site, the mine would employ 32 people and cost $2.3 million to get started. It would mine begin mining in the first quarter of 2010. The company plans to get about 857,000 pounds of uranium ore over the next three years and is expecting to sell it for between $53 and $65 per pound.

Stimulus bill expected to restart mine cleanup

Seth Johnson, of Chloride, Ariz., checks out one of many abandoned mine shafts, this one with a partial protective fence between the shaft and the trail, along the Cherum Peak Trail in the Cerbat Mountains Sept. 3, 2007, in Chloride, Ariz.

Not far away two sisters fell into a 125-foot-deep abandoned mine shaft while driving their all-terrain vehicle late Saturday. Efforts to clean up one of the West's most enduring and dangerous legacies--tens of thousands of abandoned hardrock mines, many of them dating to the 19th century--are expected to get a boost from the economic stimulus package sought by President Barack Obama. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

By JOAN LOWY
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the Beal Mountain mine opened in 1988 near Butte, Mont., its owner promoted open-pit cyanide leaching for extracting gold from ore as modern and environmentally friendly.

Pegasus Gold Corp., a Canadian company, extracted nearly 460,000 ounces of gold over a decade before closing the mine and declaring bankruptcy in 1998.

It left behind a 70-acre, cyanide-contaminated leach pond with a leaky liner and tons of rubble that sends selenium-laced runoff into streams, threatening cutthroat trout and other fish. The $6.2 million reclamation bond posted by the company doesn't come close to covering the full cost to clean up the mine, which could total nearly $40 million.

"There is a real ticking time bomb up there," said Josh Vincent, president of a Trout Unlimited chapter near the mine, which sits on U.S. Forest Service land.

Efforts to clean up one of the West's most enduring and dangerous legacies — tens of thousands of abandoned hardrock mines, many dating to the 19th century — should get a boost from the economic stimulus bill awaiting President Barack Obama's signature.

The final bill, approved by the House and Senate on Friday, contains more than $1.5 billion for construction and maintenance projects in the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the Forest Service. That includes addressing pollution and safety hazards caused by abandoned mines on public lands.

The three agencies together spent about $25 million on mine cleanup in the budget year that ended last Sept. 30, according to the staff of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., one of the lawmakers who sought the money.

Projects ranging from repairing trails to replacing equipment also are eligible for the money, so there is no guarantee the money will be spent on mine cleanup. The bill says preference is supposed to go to projects that generate most jobs.

Advocates for cleaning up abandoned mines say the work is a strong job-generator.

"These much needed funds will create thousands of jobs, reduce water pollution, eliminate public safety threats, and restore fish and wildlife habitat in rural communities across the country," said Lauren Pagel, policy director for Earthworks, an environmental group focused on mining issues.

The Government Accountability Office estimates there are at least 161,000 abandoned hardrock mines in Alaska and 11 other western states, plus South Dakota. Open mine shafts and decaying structures pose safety hazards, contaminants are polluting streams and groundwater, and piles of tailings tinged with arsenic have been left behind.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates it could cost as much as $50 billion to clean up all the nation's abandoned hardrock mines.

Anti-tax groups questioned whether mine clean up merits funds at all, considering that the bill is intended to jump-start the economy. Cleanups are temporary and unlikely to have any lasting economic effect, said Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, which advocates for less government spending.

"It's not like anyone is going to dig in these mines ever again," he said.

A report last year by the Interior Department's inspector general said abandoned mines on BLM and National Park Service land are exposing people to dangerous contaminants such as arsenic, lead and mercury. Other dangers include deadly gases, collapsing mine walls and explosive chemicals.

Among the dangers outlined in the report: all-terrain vehicle riders falling into abandoned mine shafts.

In 2007, a 13-year-old girl was killed and her 10-year-old sister seriously injured when the all-terrain vehicle they were riding ran off a trail and fell into a 125-foot mine shaft a short distance from a BLM campground near Chloride, Ariz.

At the Mojave National Preserve in California, investigators found mine shafts along roads that were large enough to swallow cars.

"The potential for more deaths and injuries is ominous," the report said.

Hard-rock miners gear up for new 1872 mining act fight

Industry fights economic woes, reform plans




The Associated Press
Las Vegas Review-Journal





A deepening recession has hurt the hard-rock mining industry, including the Gold Quarry Mine in Carlin, above. Companies are also worried about mining reform legisation in Congress. Photo by John Locher.


SPARKS — The boom days are over for much of the hard-rock mining industry.

Falling metal prices and rising production costs have squeezed profits in recent months, forcing many mine layoffs and putting some new mines on hold.

Now, the industry is gearing up for another fight over mining reform legislation with a Congress that has fewer mining supporters after November's elections that saw Democratic majorities increase in both houses.

"It'll be much more challenging for us now," acknowledged Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association based in Spokane, Wash.

The industry's economic and political challenges were discussed during the group's annual meeting and trade show in Sparks. Billed as the second largest annual mining convention in the United States, the five-day gathering drew more than 2,200 people before it ended Friday.

Mining experts told attendees that the next Congress will revive a decades-old battle over proposals to scrap the 136-year-old law that governs the mining of so-called hard-rock minerals: gold, silver, copper and many other metals.

A mining reform measure passed the House 244-166 in 2007, but failed to make it out of a Senate committee. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., would have forced the hard-rock mining industry to pay royalties on minerals extracted from public lands and would have put new environmental controls on mining.

Reno mining attorney Jim Butler said he foresees House passage again of the Rahall measure and a likely rival bill emerging in the Senate. But he thinks the troubled economy will make mining reform a backburner issue and change terms of the debate.

"Mining jobs will have to be part" of the discussion, Butler said, because metals will be needed for the infrastructure and renewable energy projects that President-elect Barack Obama is pushing to help revive the economy.

James Cress, a natural resources attorney from Denver, urged miners to locate claims now because new claims may be subject to a federal royalty in the future.

"It's virtually certain that we're going to see a royalty and it's a good time to prepare for it," Cress said. "The only question is will it be ruinous or something reasonable."

Robert Comer, regional solicitor for the Interior Department based in Denver, said there will be renewed interest in a 1999 legal opinion that gave the Interior Department the right to veto any mining proposal that causes substantial environmental harm

The opinion rendered by John Leshy, the Interior Department's top lawyer during the Clinton administration, was later abandoned by the Bush administration.

Leshy, now a member of Obama's Interior Department transition team, based the opinion on his interpretation of a 1976 federal law that directed the Interior secretary to prevent "unnecessary or undue degradation" of the public lands from all activities, including hard-rock mining.

"It's an important standard that's been misapplied by the courts and the agencies, and there needs to be discipline in implementing the standard," Comer said.

Skaer said she thinks mining opponents will use the standard as a tool to stop mine projects over the next four years.

But she said the industry is banking again on support from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a gold miner's son whose state is the fourth-highest gold producer in the world, after South Africa, Australia and China.

Skaer pointed out that both Reid and Obama opposed Rahall's 2007 bill as too extreme.

"But I'm still concerned because we don't have as many friends in Congress who truly understand the importance of the mining industry and where our stuff comes from," she said.

Skaer said the industry is not exempt from the recession and predicted a "very slow" 2009 for it.

"The industry went from a strong boom time to all of a sudden, bam, the lights are shut off overnight," she said. "But miners are cautiously optimistic because they've rebounded before."

Public lands bill looks dead for year

Staff and wire reports
Casper Star-Tribune

CHEYENNE -- A massive lands bill with protections for the Wyoming Range and parts of the Snake River in Wyoming is likely dead for the year.

Supporters said Friday that the bipartisan Omnibus Public Land Management Act apparently fell victim to a filibuster threat by a Republican senator.

The bill would have prohibited any new oil and gas leasing, mining patents or geothermal leasing in a 100-mile-long stretch of the Bridger-Teton National Forest in western Wyoming. It would also protect 387 miles of rivers and streams in the Snake River drainage under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Nevada Democrat strongly supports the lands package, but his first priorities in a lame-duck session next week are a planned rescue for the auto industry and extension of unemployment insurance benefits.

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn had threatened to filibuster the bill over what he calls its excessive spending.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Friday evening that he intends to fight for the public lands package when the Senate reconvenes in a lame-duck session on Monday.

"There are bills very important to Wyoming in this," he said in a phone interview.

He mentioned the Wyoming Range Legacy Act and the Snake Headwaters Legacy Act, which is under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. In addition, the package contains compensation for ranchers for damages done by wolves to their livestock.

"This is 150 bills that are packaged together for a single vote. And it sounds from that report that one senator is holding up the entire package because of certain bills but not all the bills, but everything is being held up," Barrasso said.

In the Wyoming Legislature the package would require 150 separate votes, he noted.

When the lame-duck session was called, Reid said the senate would be back to work on the public lands bill.

"I'm prepared to do that," Barrasso said.

The Wyoming Range Legacy Act, which, in addition to prohibiting new mineral leasing in part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, would allow conservation groups to buy and retire existing energy leases.

The bill is sponsored by Barrasso, based on legislation that the late Sen. Craig Thomas was working on at the time of his death.

The Craig Thomas Snake Headwaters Legacy Act would protect 387 miles of rivers and streams in the Snake River drainage.

Supporters of the legislation had urged Congress to act during the lame-duck session, because some authors of the legislation either retired or weren't re-elected, and their replacements won't be as familiar with the omnibus bill.

The Wyoming measures have the support of conservation organizations, sporting groups, and union and trade organizations, as well as Gov. Dave Freudenthal.

Outside Wyoming, legislation would expand wilderness along Oregon's Mount Hood and create a vast new wilderness in Idaho's Owyhee canyons. The bill also would have created wilderness areas in California, Colorado and New Mexico.

Sen. Mike Enzi was with family in Wyoming on Friday evening and could not be reached for comment, according to spokeswoman Elly Pickett.

Omnibus Lands Bill Restricts Energy Exploration

by Nicolas Loris
Heritage Foundation

In one of the first moves in the lame duck session, Senator Harry Reid (D–NV) is calling for a vote on an omnibus lands package that would create 10 new "heritage" areas and restrict millions of acres as federal wilderness land. As a result, the bill would eliminate major recreation and restrict new oil and gas leasing, logging, mining, and all other business activity in these areas. In total, 3 million acres would be withdrawn from energy leasing. The Congressional Budget Office places an $8 billion price tag on the omnibus lands bill: $7.1 billion in discretionary spending and over $915 million in mandatory spending.[1]

The lands bill removes public land that would be available for recreational, commercial, and private ownership use by designating such land as wilderness areas, heritage areas, conservation areas and wild and scenic rivers. Furthermore, the bill places restrictions on existing federal property.

The bill also grants the government the authority to take over more privately owned land. Despite numerous pledges that it will not take away private land, the Congressional Research Service asserts that the National Park Service (NPS) "could exert federal control over nonfederal lands by influencing zoning and land-use planning. Heritage area management plans are overly prescriptive in regulating private property use, private property protections in legislation might not be adhered to, and NHA lands may be targeted for federal purchase and management."[2]

Forming National Heritage Areas

The process for forming a National Heritage Area (NHA) begins when an individual or group identifies a perceived historically significant property. "Historically significant property" is defined by the NPS as "a place designated by the U.S. Congress where natural, cultural, historic and recreational resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally-distinctive landscape … [to] tell nationally important stories about our nation," so just about any parcel of land or long-standing structure could be touted as an intricate part of someone's history and become eligible for federal subsidies, as the proposed NHAs for Mississippi alone reveal. Senator Thad Cochran (R–MS) introduced legislation that designates 30 counties in northeast Mississippi as NHAs, claiming, "The hills of Mississippi are rich in unique historical, natural, and cultural characteristics."[3]

There are three key reasons why existing NHAs should become financially independent of the federal government, as their enabling legislation requires, and no additional NHAs should be established.[4]

First, NHAs divert limited NPS resources away from core responsibilities. NPS advocates and staff have long complained about the lack of resources that Congress provides in comparison to its extensive responsibilities. Both the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service estimate that the cost of NPS's maintenance backlog exceeds several billion dollars and is rising despite increased annual appropriations. Park attendance has been in decline in recent years, and camping in the parks has decreased, perhaps in part because of the functional obsolescence of campground facilities.[5] Some of this decrease in recreational usage can be attributed to silly provisions such as bans on snowmobiles, which significantly reduce tourism and hurt local economies.[6]

Second, federal budget costs for NHAs are expanding at a rapid pace. If enacted, the legislation would cost taxpayers an additional $110 million to create 10 new NHAs and study the feasibility of adding two more.[7] But not a single NHA has become financially independent within the timeframe allotted, and all have had their federal funding extended.

Third, private property rights are put at risk. On the surface, most of the legislation designating an NHA, and the subsequent management plans that guide them, explicitly prohibit the NPS or the management entity from using eminent domain to acquire property. They also prohibit the use of federal funds to acquire private property by way of a voluntary transaction with a willing seller. But NHAs pose a threat to private property rights through the exercise of restrictive zoning that may severely limit the extent to which property owners can develop or use their property. Termed "regulatory takings," such zoning abuses are the most common form of property rights abuse today. They are also the most pernicious because they do not require any compensation to owners whose property values are reduced by the new zoning.[8]

Federal Land Ownership and Restrictions

The omnibus lands package would allow the federal government to take ownership of specific areas by designating them as wilderness areas, heritage areas, conservation areas, or wild and scenic rivers. Furthermore, millions of acres of existing federal property would restrict the development of natural resources, particularly mineral resources. The federal government already owns and controls 650 million acres of land in the United States, including a large portion of land in the western U.S. For instance, the federal government owns approximately 85 percent of the land in Nevada, 69 percent of Alaska, 57 percent of Utah, and 53 percent of Oregon.[9]

Under the lands package, for example, the federal government would add 794,000 acres to the 45.4 million acres they already have in California, along with 83 miles of river. And it does not stop there. In total, the federal government would increase its stake in 15 states, reducing private property rights and placing valuable resources off limits.

Energy Off Limits

Moving additional land to government control frequently places energy supplies off limits and the omnibus lands package is no exception:. Over 3 million in total acreage would be withdrawn from energy leasing, including areas with enormous potential to extract new oil and natural gas. For example, 331 million barrels of recoverable oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas would be taken out of exploration in Wyoming. The total amount of energy that would be restricted is equivalent to the amount of natural gas the entire U.S. produces in 15 years.[10]

The bill could not only restrict conventional energy resources, but it could also restrict access to oil shale in parts of Colorado and Wyoming. An estimated 1.2–1.8 trillion barrels of oil is available in the Green River Formation.[11] A moderate estimate of 800 billion barrels of oil that would be recoverable from oil shale in the Green River Formation is three times greater than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.[12]

Although not all this potential energy would be off limits under Reid's proposal, recoverable oil refined from oil shale would provide another resource for domestic fuel production, and restricting parts of this land will only make extraction more difficult. Though the price of oil has been in steady decline as the current recession unfolds, the U.S. would still benefit from an increase in supply, and when the economy recovers, prices may likely rise again.[13] The omnibus lands package would take these valuable and strategic energy resources permanently off the table.

Furthermore, the omnibus package would restrict a number of other activities. Commercial timber harvesting, mining claims, and mineral leases are generally prohibited in wilderness areas designated by Congress.[14] Concerns also exist that animal grazing and motorized recreational activities would also be off limits.[15] Restricting these uses would undoubtedly hurt local economies by hampering commercial activities and reducing tourism and could lead to even more government rules and regulations.

Not the Time to Restrict Land

The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2008 would result in a huge expansion in government ownership of land in the United States. This increase would restrict access to energy and limit economic opportunity at a time when the nation should be increasing domestic supply. Moreover, this bill would restrict other commercial activities such as mining, timber harvesting, and recreational activities, and it would continue the federal assault on private property rights.

Nicolas D. Loris is a Research Assistant in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Congressional Budget Office, "Cost Estimate: S.1193," November 12, 2008, at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/do
c9915/s1193OmniLand.pdf (November 14, 2008).

[2] Congressional Research Service, "The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2008: Senate Amendment 5662 as Submitted on September 26, 2008," CRS Report for Congress, October 31, 2008.

[3] Press release, "Cochran Moves to Establish Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area," November 1, 2007, at http://www.mshills.org/documents/Cochranpressrelease.pdf (November 14, 2008).

[4] See Ronald D. Utt, "Another Federal Assault on Property Rights: The Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2025, April 18, 2007, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/SmartGrowth/bg2025.cfm.

[5] Press release, "Cochran Moves to Establish Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area."

[6] Erin Hymel, "Banning the Better Alternative," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 547, August 2, 2004, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Regulation/wm547.cfm.

[7] Press release, "Dr. Coburn Says Upcoming Special Session of Congress Should Focus on Economic Crisis, Not Trivial Lands Bill," October 20, 2008 at http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?
FuseAction=LatestNews.PressReleases&C
ontentRecord_id=1c14dd8f-802a-23ad-4dac-c03600ce287e (November 13, 2008).

[8] The U.S. General Accounting Office (now Government Accountability Office) reported in 2003 that of the 44 regulatory takings lawsuits against the agencies of the federal government (including Interior) that were settled between 2000 and 2002, 14 resulted in cash awards totaling $36.5 million to property owners. See U.S. General Accounting Office, Regulatory Takings: Agency Compliance with Executive Order on Government Actions Affecting Private Property Use (Abstract), GAO-04-120T, October 16, 2003.

[9] GSA Office of Governmentwide Policy, "Overview of the United States Government's Owned and Leased Real Property," September 30, 2004, at http://www.gsa.gov/gsa/cm_attachment
s/GSA_DOCUMENT/Annual%20Report%2
0%20FY2004%20Final_R2M-n11_0Z5RDZ-i34K-pR.pdf (October 30, 2008).

[10] Press release, "Dr. Coburn Says Upcoming Special Session of Congress Should Focus on Economic Crisis."

[11] Nicolas Loris, "Omnibus Prohibits Oil Shale Development," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1754, December 18, 2007, at www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1754.cfm.

[12] Oil Shale and Tar Sands Programmatic EIS Information Center, "About Oil Shale," at http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm (November 13, 2008).

[13] Although the Energy Information Administration has dramatically reduced its 2009 gasoline forecasts, the 2009 projections remain higher than the national average for the date November 10, 2008. For more information, see EIA, "Short-Term Energy Outlook," November 12, 2008, at http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo (November 13, 2008).

[14] Congressional Research Service, "The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2008: Senate Amendment 5662 as Submitted on September 26, 2008" CRS Report for Congress, October 31, 2008.

[15] Ibid.

Death Valley struggles to make abandoned mines safe

They are hard to find and costly to fix. They also can be deadly.

A warning sign at the entrance to an old gold mining area Skidoo. Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

By David Kelly
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Death Valley National Park -- Here in ghostly Skidoo, the holes and tunnels are everywhere, nearly a thousand of them puncturing mountains and cratering the desert. Cold winds blow through darkened shafts. Bats flutter in and out at twilight.

Linda Manning, an expert on abandoned mines at Death Valley National Park, peered into a tunnel braced by beams near the old mining camp.

"It kind of gives me the creeps," she said as dank air rushed over her. "These timbers are probably over 100 years old. You never know when they've reached their tipping point."

No other park in the nation has as many abandoned mines as Death Valley. Officials put the number between 10,000 and 50,000, or about a third of all hazardous mines within the national park system.

Now Death Valley and other parks are under increasing pressure to reduce the risks of those mines, risks that include falling, drowning, explosion and asphyxiation. At least 33 people have died between 1999 and 2007 in abandoned-mine accidents on federal and private land, experts say. Many of the openings are all but invisible.

"We are gravely concerned that the Department of the Interior has put the public's health and safety at risk by not addressing hazards posed by abandoned mines on federal lands," said a report by the department's inspector general last July. "We identified serious environmental and safety hazards where members of the public have been killed, injured or exposed to dangerous environmental contaminants."

California parks have the highest number of abandoned mines, with Death Valley followed by Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park.

In September, Death Valley closed the defunct Keane Wonder Mine after the report cited a family with a toddler playing near a collapsing opening. In 1984, a visitor fell 30 feet down a shaft in the mine and died.

The park, the largest in the nation, warns visitors about the dangers, but the message isn't always clear.

At the entrance to a mine shaft here large enough to stand in, signs bearing skull and crossbones warn of death from falling, suffocating and explosion, but a trail leads visitors to the opening. Mines, in fact, are often highlighted on park maps.

"I share the concern about mixed messages, of doing tours of mines and then telling people they cannot go into them," said Manning, a wildlife biologist who helps identify and mitigate mines in the park. "The signs say 'stay out,' but you can see the trails go right to it."

Some of the most dangerous mines have been fitted with bat gates that keep people out and let wildlife in. Others have metal netting stretched over openings.

The financially strapped National Park Service estimates the total cost of making mines safe at about $233 million, with an immediate need for $60 million. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation to establish a cleanup fund by requiring all hard-rock mining firms operating on public land to pay a 4% royalty on existing operations and 8% on new ones.

The inspector general recommended that parks request enough money to mitigate the worst sites and share resources to shore up their programs for abandoned mines.

Despite warnings, people continue to explore mines and occasionally post their exploits on YouTube. In one video, a middle-aged man heads into a Death Valley mine. At the point when he sees danger signs, a message on the video reads: "Danger. . . . That's my middle name! Let's check out this mine."

"It's not a matter of if we have another death, but when," said Mike Cipra, California Desert Program manager with the National Parks Conservation Assn. "This year, Death Valley got no money for mine reclamation. All national parks are competing for that money. There is an $8-billion maintenance backlog in the national parks."

The job is daunting, especially in Death Valley.

Miners once moved like termites over this harsh landscape, blasting and boring their way through sand and rock. Everything was taken -- uranium, silver, talc, borax.

When the Earth stopped yielding its treasures, the miners simply packed up and went away, leaving gaping holes behind.

Deciding how to balance this rich if treacherous history with public safety is complicated, said Linda Greene, who works for the park's cultural and natural resources department.

"Mining has been going on in Death Valley for more than 100 years," she said. "They are good educational spots, and we consider that when we decide whether to close them or not."

Greene and Manning were searching for old mines in the remnants of Skidoo, once home to 700 people and one of the most productive gold camps in California. The site is one of dozens scattered across an epic, near-biblical landscape.

It didn't take long to find mines. Some were mere holes in the ground, others yawning chasms in the desert crust. Trails led to a largely intact old mine, with signs warning visitors not to enter.

"The floors can easily collapse," said Greene, examining the relic. "Last spring a volunteer found a case of dynamite nearby, which is highly unstable."

The most menacing mines are just deep gouges in the Earth, often more than 50 feet deep and 30 feet across, propped open by timbers. Metal netting stretches over some, while others remain exposed. Climbers are known to rappel down the sides into the darkness below.

"I'd like to cover all of this with some cable netting, but I don't have the money," Manning said.

Greene saw the danger -- but also an opportunity for people to learn.

"To me, it's an interesting example of early mining technology," she said. "If you fill up the hole, you can't imagine how they worked. If we could make it safe for tourists and for education, that would be great."

Death Valley officials are working to minimize the worst hazards, but with money scarce, this is often done piecemeal.

"We would like to hire a crew and inventory all the mines and while doing that begin the closing process as well," Manning said. "Without people on staff to do this, we are relying on finding partners. Putting a bat gate up is a couple thousand dollars. If it could be done in-house, it would be half the price."

In the Mojave National Preserve, a lack of money has meant little movement in addressing some 600 sites.

The inspector general's report said mine shafts on some roads there are "large enough to swallow entire vehicles" but have no fences or warning signs. Sites have been identified and prioritized, but few have been made safe, the report said.

Joshua Tree National Park was praised by the inspector general for using volunteers to map mine sites and for finding cheap ways to install bat gates and other mine covers.

"We have about 300 openings, and about 120 are considered very hazardous," said Luke Sabala, who heads the park's abandoned-mine program.

"All of the mines close to roads and trails are our No. 1 priorities. We have taken care of almost all of those."

So far, Joshua Tree's mines have caused no deaths or injuries. But the job of securing them is a big one.

"These mines have been here a long time," Sabala said. "Mining is the legacy all of us land managers have been left to deal with."

Grijalva: Bush policies bad for federal public lands

Tucson Region




By Tony Davis
Arizona Daily Star




Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ)



The Bush administration mounted a "concerted strategy" to reduce protections for federal public lands and to open them to all types of industry, a Tucson congressman says in a new report.

The report lists more than 40 actions by federal agencies such as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management that Rep. Raúl Grijalva says harmed public lands.

They often allowed mining, timber and other private industry to exploit resources at the environment's expense, he claims.

Grijalva, a Democrat, is a congressional leader on public lands issues, as he chairs the National Parks, Forest and Public Lands subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee.

However, Bush administration officials and agency managers have generally defended their actions, calling them efforts to restore balance to public lands policy after eight years of Clinton administration policies that more commonly sided with environmentalists. Federal officials have also cited budget pressures in explaining some of the decisions.

Here are capsule accounts of some of the actions criticized in Grijalva's report, their effects on Arizona, and the federal agencies' responses:

Border fence
Grijalva's report criticized the Department of Homeland Security for repeatedly invoking a 2005 federal law allowing it to waive environmental laws — such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act — to build a 670-mile border fence.

The congressman is co-sponsoring a bill to rescind provisions of that law. Grijalva and environmental groups say the fence blocks wildlife movements and fragments habitat crucial for the survival of dozens of imperiled species, including jaguars, wolves and pronghorn antelope.

Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff said the fence, now about half-finished, is needed to block the illegal entry of terrorists, to impede drug smuggling, human smuggling and gang activity, and to counteract the environmental effects of illegal immigration.

Chertoff has used the law four times to waive dozens of environmental laws and regulations to build nearly 500 miles of fence, including segments along more than 200 miles of Arizona's border with Mexico.

Grand Canyon uranium mining
Grijalva has pushed through a measure to prevent uranium mining on 1 million acres adjoining Grand Canyon National Park for a year. But Interior Department officials have refused to withdraw the area from mining, and they are fighting to repeal underlying regulations.

Two potential uranium-mining exploration sites are being drilled on BLM land north of the national park. Environmental groups are suing to force the Interior Department to withdraw those lands, on the grounds that the radioactivity from the uranium could leak into the groundwater or the Colorado River running through the Grand Canyon.

There's a long history of uranium mining north of the Canyon, and it is "very responsible mining," counters Scott Florence, director of BLM's Arizona Strip office. It's all underground, with "a very small footprint" on the surface, Florence says. "They are not a big open-pit mine."

Loaded-gun parks
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has proposed a regulation allowing visitors to national parks and wildlife refuges to carry loaded, concealed weapons if they have proper permits. Today, visitors can pack only unloaded guns. The new rules would affect Arizona and other states that already allow concealed weapons in state parks.

Grijalva says the new rule would cause widespread confusion among gun owners because many national parks are located in two or more states with different gun rules.

Interior says it wants to respect states' ability to determine who may possess firearms within their boundaries. The National Rifle Association says park visitors should be allowed to carry guns for self-defense.

Seven retired National Park Service directors opposed the proposal, telling Kempthorne it would impair park rangers' ability to protect people and natural resources.

Off-road vehicles
Grijalva says environmentally harmful off-road vehicle use is out of control and growing rapidly on public lands. The vehicles have damaged cultural sites, disturbed wildlife habitat and destroyed private property, Grijalva says.

"Irresponsible off-roading has become such a menace that it is now the single greatest threat to American landscapes," a retired Forest Service official, Jack Gregory, testified at a congressional hearing in April.

A Tucson BLM official says the agency is trying to keep off-road vehicles under control, using trained volunteers on motorcycles and ATVs to go on patrol, pick up trash and talk to off-roaders about proper use.

"As more people are out on public lands, our challenges will always be there," said Brian Bellew, BLM's Tucson manager. "But we are coming up with much better means of dealing with those resource conflicts."

Air quality in national parks
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed changing air quality regulations to make it less likely that emissions from new power plants near national parks would be in violation.

Grijalva says the regulation, still pending, would let companies seeking to build plants near national parks, including the Grand Canyon and Saguaro National Park, circumvent congressionally established pollution limits.

EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn said the rule is part of an agency program to prevent air quality degradation in national parks and would not change the level of emissions allowed in clean-air areas.

Roadless rule
Throughout President Bush's tenure, federal officials have sought to overturn a last-minute rule instituted by then-President Bill Clinton that would ban logging, road building and development on 58 million acres of national forests and grasslands. That includes 420,000 Coronado National Forest acres in Southern Arizona.

In 2005, the Forest Service approved a new rule allowing state governments to petition federal officials to exempt these forest lands in their states from wilderness designation.

There have been conflicting lower-court rulings on whether the decision failed to consider environmental impacts. The decisions are under appeal.

BLM rejects House Resources Committee Grand Canyon hardrock mining ban

RULE CHANGE WOULD BAN EMERGENCY WITHDRAWALS

Federal officials are seeking to abolish a rule that allowed the House Natural Resources Committee to try to block uranium mining and exploration around the Grand Canyon.

by Dorothy Kosich
Mineweb

RENO, NV - The Bureau of Land Management has published a proposed rule which rejects the House Natural Resources Emergency House Resolution enacted in June that bans uranium mining and exploration near the Grand Canyon National Park.

The agency argues that the BLM "continues to believe the emergency procedure to be unnecessary. Like a withdrawal, segregation removes the lands from the operation of the public land laws, including the mining laws."

"Contrary to its implication, the procedures for issuing an emergency withdrawal order do not result in the protection of public lands more rapidly than the completion of a more conventional withdrawal process. Conventional withdrawals of public lands, as necessary and appropriate, will continue."

BLM Director Jim Caswell said, "The BLM recognizes that unique circumstances may arise requiring the withdrawal of land from particular activities in order to preserve resources and values that need immediate protection. We remain committed to working closely with states, local governments, and other stakeholders in the timely withdrawal of land under such critical circumstances."

The proposed BLM rule published Friday in the Federal Register would remove regulations that provide for emergency land withdrawals, such as the one utilized by the House Natural Resources Committee ordering the Secretary of the Interior to withdraw as much as 1,068,908 acres of federal land near the Grand Canyon National Park from any new uranium mining for up to the next three years.

In its published notice, the BLM said, "These regulations are redundant, since public lands can be protected without substantial delay via conventional withdrawal procedures, without resource to the regulations providing for emergency withdrawals. Moreover, constitutional issues may arise whenever a Congressional committee directs the Secretary of the Interior to withdraw lands immediately."

BLM officials estimate there are as many as 10,000 existing mining claims on BLM and the U.S. Forest Service lands near the Grand Canyon for all types of hardrock exploration.

The lawmakers used a seldom-utilized rule in the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act that allows the House and Senate Natural Resources Committee to withdraw lands from mining and other activities in emergencies. A 1983 Justice Department opinion found similar resolutions to be unconstitutional.

The public has until October 25th to comment on the proposed BLM rule change.

Team of lone rangers scours the new Wild West

Park service workers in the Mojave never know what vestige of the Wild West they'll find, right down to train robbers.

By Mike Anton
Los Angeles Times

KELSO, CALIF. — High noon and the desert is hot as a wok, yet Tim Duncan is wearing body armor under his uniform. A handgun and a Taser hang from his belt. Next to him in the truck are a shotgun and an M-16 assault rifle with extra magazines.

"Out here, you have to be prepared," he said.

Duncan is a National Park Service ranger at the Mojave National Preserve, a Mordor-like sweep of serrated mountains, feral deserts, Joshua tree forests, dry lakes and lava beds -- a park five times the size of Los Angeles that's patrolled by eight law officers.

Here the wilds of nature meet the wilds of man, an incongruous environment that has hidden meth labs and illegal waste dumps, plant and wildlife poachers, archaeological thieves, the occasional dumped body and train robbers.

Yes, train robbers.

Union Pacific trains laden with goods from the coast rumble into the Mojave National Preserve at the aptly named Devils Playground, 40 miles of hellish sand dunes and salt flats at the base of the Kelso Mountains. Mile-long caravans of double-stacked cars wheeze to a crawl as they labor up the steep Cima Grade through the heart of the preserve. Sometimes they stop on side tracks to let other trains pass.

Thieves typically strike at night -- busting into boxcars and tossing down the booty to waiting accomplices with trucks.

Sometimes, looters find what they want, such as consumer electronics. "Other times the container is loaded with teddy bears or promotional magnets for a restaurant," Duncan said.

Congress created the preserve in 1994. When Duncan arrived three years later, the railroad was losing more than $1 million a month there to robbers.

"It was just like an open-air flea market out here," he said. "Stuff was strewn everywhere."

Stepped-up enforcement by park rangers and railroad police has dampened the wholesale looting. Yet rangers still come across piles of empty flat-screen television boxes and Styrofoam packing material. Four men were caught last month liberating TVs from a boxcar in broad daylight. A fifth suspect, a 17-year-old boy, was found dead, a victim of the scorching midday heat.

Such arrests are rare. Those who do get caught tend to stand out.

Three summers ago, Ranger Kirk Gebicke and a partner stopped to chat with two men sitting in an empty Budget rental truck near the railroad tracks. The pair had been drinking and couldn't explain why they were parked in a moving van miles from anything that needed to be moved. They expressed ignorance about a sack of cocaine the rangers found in the grass four feet away.

The men were arrested. An aerial search of the area found 75 flat-screen TVs worth more than $225,000 that had been thrown from a train.

"I'm at the edge of the world here," Gebicke said. "There are things here that you won't find at Yosemite or Yellowstone."

Mojave National Preserve lies an hour east of Barstow, sandwiched between Interstate 15, Interstate 40 and the Nevada state line. Known as the Lonesome Triangle, it has been trafficked for eons by people seeking riches, a path to someplace else -- or simply a place to hide.

Prehistoric hunters tracked large animals across a verdant landscape of rivers and lakes sculpted by volcanic activity. Ancestors of today's Mojave, Paiute and Chemehuevi Indians eked out an existence after the lakes disappeared.

Spanish soldiers and Mormon pioneers blazed routes to the coast that others followed in droves -- the Southland's first freeways. Miners in the 1800s discovered gold, silver, copper and minerals used in industry. Ranchers found endless grazing land. During World War II, Army Gen. George Patton chose the Mojave as a stand-in for North Africa to train soldiers. After the war, returning troops turned the Mojave into an off-road motorcycling mecca for a booming Los Angeles.

An anything-goes Wild West ethic permeates the area's history, and vestiges of it persist.

The freeways are conveyor belts for trouble from Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Some 1,800 miles of dirt roads lead to countless out-of-sight arroyos and hidey holes. It's impossible to know what's going on out there.

At any given time, two or three lone rangers drift across a potentially hostile universe where the road signs have been blasted by bullets and any hope of backup is a mirage.

Rangers study the landscape for signs of recent human activity. Gebicke carries what he calls a "track trap" -- a garden rake to smooth over entrances to dirt roads leading to known trouble spots.

"I'm seeing what's in place and what's out of place," Duncan said. "If I'm on a road where there never was a gate and suddenly there is one now, why, that raises a red flag."

Duncan, 52, is a gregarious bear of a man with a graying beard and a Georgia accent thick as country gravy. He grew up in the sticks and dreamed of a life outdoors just like Fess Parker's Daniel Boone in the '60s television series. After a stint in the Air Force and time working for an aerospace firm, Duncan went back to college, earned a forestry degree and joined the Park Service, serving first in Alaska and later at the Manassas Civil War battle site in Virginia. His first two years in the Mojave he patrolled alone.

More than 500,000 vehicles a year traverse the preserve's few paved roads. Because there are no formal entrances or fees, it's unknown how many are just passing through on what is a popular and at times white-knuckle shortcut between Palm Springs and Las Vegas. (A driver recently was clocked going 121 mph and ticketed; fatal wrecks are common.)

Park officials stress that the overwhelming majority of visitors come to admire the preserve's austere beauty. Three of North America's four desert ecosystems meet in its 1.6 million acres to form more than 30 distinctive plant and animal habitats. Hiking the Kelso Dunes, which rise to 700 feet, conjures a feeling of being Lawrence in Arabia. Spring wildflowers are a popular draw as is the lovingly restored Kelso Depot, once a thriving passenger train stop and now the preserve's visitor center.

But off the beaten path are scenes that will never appear in a glossy coffee-table book: The man hanging from a rope on a Joshua tree in February, an apparent suicide. The attempted hijacking of a recreational vehicle by a luckless man abandoned in the desert by a friend; he was beaten and subdued by the four vacationers when his gun proved empty.

"Some people look at all this desert and say, 'That's just wasteland. It doesn't matter what I do with it -- or do in it,' " Duncan says as he drives past an old water-pumping station with graffiti and three wild burros. "I've had people tell me to my face: 'We know what the rules are, but when no one's around, we do what we please.' "

Thieves will steal anything that's not anchored to the ground -- as well as stuff that is. Scrap metal from historic ranch structures and mining sites. Copper wiring from modern communication relay stations. Rare butterflies and reptiles coveted by collectors, including the colorful rosy boa and the endangered desert tortoise. Tortoises have also been found shot to death.

Two men who stole a front-end loader from an abandoned mine carved a road across miles of black lava cinder cones before they were caught.

Mojave National Preserve has 1,600 documented archaeological sites, some dating to 10,000 B.C. Many of them have been stripped of their pottery, baskets, stone tools and metates, arrowheads and other artifacts.

"What surprises me is how much material used to be there," said David Nichols, the preserve's full-time archaeologist, who compared his findings with old field surveys. "At most of these sites, I'd say 70% of the visible cultural material is gone."

Rampant looting predates the Park Service. An area first documented in 1977 was so rich in artifacts it was dubbed the Freightwagon Site because you could fill one with the stuff. A researcher's report offered this prescient observation: "As soon as this site location becomes public knowledge, it will be vandalized by off-the-road 'enthusiasts.' "

When an associate of Nichols' revisited the area last year, nearly everything was gone. Off-road quad tracks led straight to the site from I-15.

"It's awful," Nichols said. "And because the place is so vast we never, ever catch anyone in the act of doing anything."

Native American petroglyphs have been cut from rock walls and carted off. Boulders adorned with ancient art have vanished. Vandalism is pervasive, especially of petroglyphs depicting "mask figures" which resemble a human face with eyes and a mouth.

People shoot at them for target practice.

"I dream of the day that I come around a corner and find a guy with a hammer and chisel," Nichols said.

Maybe he shouldn't, given that Nichols patrols the backcountry unarmed.

The preserve's remoteness makes it an ideal place to take care of certain types of business.

In 2001, a Dallas man was traveling to Los Angeles with three men he met in a coffee shop. They pulled off I-15 and drove into the preserve to find a quiet place to empty their bladders. That's when one of the man's new friends shot him to death under the soft light of a million stars.

Two years later, a woman's torso was found just outside the preserve. Tattoos of a hummingbird over the left breast and an "M" with a star on the lower back led authorities to identify the remains as those of a 19-year-old Las Vegas prostitute last seen getting into a car with California plates.

Duncan figures it's a sure bet there are more out there who will never be found. "There's an old story: If all the dead here in the desert stood up, we'd have a forest."

As he approaches places such as the New Trail mine, a lurching 20-minute drive up a rock-strewn road, Duncan is aware of the risk of being in this country alone.

It was here in 2001 that Duncan and Gebicke went to saw off locks that had been placed on the camp's old cabins. They encountered four men in a pickup coming the other way. They just happened to have the key.

At the mine, the rangers discovered a drug lab and 10 gallons of pure methamphetamine oil ready to be crystallized.

The men were arrested and the mine site cleaned up.

A 2003 National Park Service narrative of the preserve's history noted that "crystal meth has posed a considerable problem to the park." Rangers periodically run across red phosphorus stains, containers of lye and empty boxes of pseudoephedrine -- signs of a cook at work.

"If I don't get up here for six months, you have no clue as to what's gone on in that six months," Duncan said.

On this day, the New Trail mine is quiet. On a table in an outbuilding are empty bottles of whiskey, sour apple schnapps and a half-filled jar of clear liquid labeled "corn whiskey."

Outside, a lizard scurries across ground strewn with beer bottles and spent shells.

Whoever was here left several camp chairs behind, suggesting they will be back. What they'll be up to is anyone's guess.

The desert is good at keeping secrets.

On patrol, Ranger Tim Duncan carries a handgun and a Taser. Next to him in his truck are a shotgun and an M-16 assault rifle with extra magazines. “Out here, you have to be prepared,” he says.

Court: No reserved water rights for state trust land

The Associated Press
Santa Fe New Mexican

There are no federally reserved water rights for the millions of acres of state trust land in New Mexico, the state Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.

In an important case involving water law in the West, the court rejected claims made by the State Land Office that a federal legal doctrine reserved water rights for lands granted to New Mexico by the federal government when it became a territory and then a state.

At issue is a legal doctrine that recognizes water rights for tribal lands as well as federal lands that make up national forests, military bases and national parks.

The court's decision came in a case involving the adjudication of water rights in the San Juan River Basin of northwestern Mexico. In the river system, there are nearly 300,000 acres of trust land.

The Land Office manages about 13 million of acres of land across New Mexico, generating money for public schools and other institutions from oil and natural gas production on the lands as well as grazing, mining and real estate development.

New Mexico's top water official, the state engineer, as well as the Navajo Nation, Jicarilla Apache Nation and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe had opposed the water rights claim for trust lands.

"The Court of Appeals got it exactly right," D.L. Sanders, chief counsel for the state engineer, said in an interview.

He said no state court has recognized federal reserved water rights for state trust lands in the West although the legal question has come up in other places, including Arizona and Montana.

"By everybody's calculation, this was a huge stretch in the legal theories," Sanders said.

Had water rights been reserved for New Mexico's trust lands, Sanders said, it would have been a "sweeping change in law" and disrupted the current system that allocates rights for using water. Federal reserved water rights typically are more senior than those held by private landowners or municipalities in New Mexico, giving them a greater priority in times of drought when not enough water is available to cover the demands of all users.

Last year, a state District Court in San Juan County rejected the claim made by the Land Office.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the decision.

The lands conveyed to New Mexico by acts of Congress from 1850 to 1910 "were never withdrawn from the public domain and reserved for a federal purpose. As such, it necessarily follows that any attendant federal reserved water rights that the commissioner now claims in connection with those lands were also not impliedly reserved," the court said in an opinion written by Judge James Weschler.

A spokeswoman from the Land Office did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment on the case or whether the ruling would be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Mining company renegotiates purchase of Langtry property

Matt Wrye, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

International Silver Inc. (OTCBB: ISLV) - a Tucson, Ariz.-based exploration and mine development company - has announced that its escrow on the Langtry property in the Calico Mining District near Barstow is being extended for three months, and that it renegotiate the purchase terms.

The terms previously pegged payment at $8 million, with 100 percent undivided interest.

But now, International Silver will pay $2 million by Dec. 5, and the remaining $6 million will be financed and payed over a 15-year period.

Langtry comprises about 400 acres, and it's estimated to have 72 million ounces of silver and almost 3 million tons of barite.

The company also wants to start drilling by year's end on the Laviathan Property, a 1,300-acre piece of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and also located in the Calico Mining District.

The company estimates there's about 1 million tons of barite-silver ore entrenched throughout 60 mining claims on Laviathan. Barite is a heavy material used in manufacturing oil drills.

New wilderness proposals for Inyo

By Mike Gervais
Inyo Register

Senator Barbara Boxer and Congressman Buck McKeon, co-sponsors of the Wild Heritage Act, aren’t the only legislators who see the potential for additional wilderness in Inyo County, despite promises that the controversial wilderness designation would be the last requested within Inyo County.

Senator Dianne Feinstein is looking at several new wilderness designations in Southern Inyo that top officials are saying would hinder potential revenue sources, job opportunities and recreation in the area.

Feinstein’s office received a request by the California Wilderness Coalition seeking several new wilderness designations in Southern California, five of which are proposed for Inyo County’s Fifth District, including areas of Death Valley.

Feinstein’s staffers brought the proposals before Fifth District Supervisor Richard Cervantes, earlier this month.

The five new wilderness proposals include the Great Falls Basin Wilderness located near Trona on the southeast side of China Lake Naval Weapons Station, the Malpais Mesa proposed wilderness addition on the west side of Death Valley National Park, the Slate Range proposed wilderness just west of the Great Falls Basin proposal, and two wilderness additions within Death Valley National Park, one of which includes the area around the Ubehebe Crater, but does not include the crater itself.

The board decided Tuesday to review the wilderness proposals and draft a response to Feinstein. First District Supervisor Linda Arcularius said she was grateful that Feinstein’s staffers discussed the proposals with the board before drafting legislation.

“She has only been requested to do this, and she has not agreed to carry any legislation,” which gives the county the opportunity to work with the legislators to be sure the county’s needs are met before legislation is drafted.

Arcularius mentioned that the board did not have that opportunity with the Wild Heritage Act which aims to create the Eastern Sierra/ Northern San Gabriel Wilderness.

The board agreed to review the wilderness proposals and outline its concerns and send a response to Feinstein.

“Our first concern is that these proposals don’t fit the definition of wilderness” as defined in the 1964 Wilderness Act, said Fourth District Supervisor Jim Bilyeu. “The second is mining,” he said, adding that the areas described for the proposed wilderness are rich in mineral resources, have current mining claims on them and/or companies researching the possibility of opening mining claims.

Supervisor Cervantes brought up several concerns about mining in Inyo County and the negative effects the proposed wilderness could have on the industry. “This is about economic opportunities for Inyo County being locked up,” he said.

The proposed Malpais Mesa wilderness area includes an area where Timberline Resources is conducting an exploratory survey in hopes of opening a mine in the area “which would open up the potential for income for the county,” the Fifth District Supervisor said Tuesday.

There is also a study group conducting research in that same area in hopes of finding a location for a geothermal plant, Cervantes added.

If the wilderness designation is pushed through, the area would be off-limits to mining and industry of any kind, including a geothermal plant.

Cervantes called the latest onslaught of wilderness proposals a “nefarious plot” by environmentalists to outlaw mining in Inyo County’s mineral-rich areas.

Cervantes also mentioned that the Slate Range Wilderness Range near Panamint Valley is the site of the Briggs Mine and the Ratcliff mine.

He also said the Briggs Mine, which supports 120 jobs when it is operating, is completely out of sight of the public, and does not spoil the scenic desert views of Southern Inyo.

Cervantes said the same of the Great Basin proposed wilderness. “That particular area is a high mining area,” said Cervantes. He added that Feinstein’s staffers are also saying that the Great Falls Basin proposed wilderness area “would provide a buffer zone for the (China Lake) naval base. But everybody who’s been out there knows that you can’t wander onto the base without knowing about it, there are signs everywhere.”

“That buffer thing doesn’t hold water,” he added, and the other supervisors agreed.

Second District Supervisor Susan Cash noted that wilderness designations, according to the 1964 Wilderness Act, are not designed to provide “buffer” zones for military instillations, but to protect “unchanged and unspoiled” areas. She also said many of the areas don’t fit the description of “unchanged and unspoiled.”

“This has nothing to do with protection, it has everything to do with numbers,” said Third District Supervisor Beverly Brown, noting that the Ubehebe Crater is an area she could see being protected as wilderness, but not the surrounding desert area that is being considered for the protection.

“My position is that I don’t support any additional wilderness designation unless it fits the 1960s definition,” which says the designated land must be “unspoiled,” Bilyeu said.

Phone calls to Senator Feinstein’s office seeking comments on the proposed wilderness designations were not returned.

Do uranium mines belong near Grand Canyon?

Mining companies stake claims on federal land adjoining the park, while opponents say drinking water will be at risk.

Mining companies are staking claims on federal land near Grand Canyon National Park. Opponents say radioactive isotopes may leach into drinking water. Mining companies, backed by the administration, say there’s no cause for concern. (Melanie Stetson Freeman – Staff/File)

By Mark Clayton
Christian Science Monitor

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZ.
On a ragged outcrop just a short walk from a Grand Canyon overlook where millions of visitors annually come to gawk at one of the world’s most stunning vistas sits the old Orphan uranium mine. Soil radiation levels around it are 450 times higher than normal. It’s encircled by a protective fence.

A sign warns: “Remain behind fence – environmental evaluation in progress.” In the canyon hundreds of feet below, another sign by gurgling Horn Creek instructs thirsty hikers not to drink its radioactive water.

Even so, Horn Creek eventually splashes its way to the canyon bottom and into the Colorado River, a vital water source for 25 million people from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to San Diego. In that mighty river, the Orphan’s radioactive dribble is diluted to insignificance.

But what if a dozen or even scores of new uranium mines were leaching uranium radioisotopes into this critical water source? That is what Arizona’s governor, water authorities in two states, scientists, environmentalists, and Congress are all worried about. Should they be?

Everybody from mining-industry officials to environmentalists agrees that the Orphan mine is a poster child for the bad old days of uranium mining going back to the 1950s. Today’s regulations and newer mining techniques make such pollution far less likely, industry officials say, though environmentalists vehemently disagree. The question remains: Is Orphan only a vision of the past – or is it a vision of the future, too?

The US Southwest may be about to find out. Driven by soaring uranium prices and fresh interest in nuclear power, mining companies have staked more than 10,600 exploratory mineral claims – most of them smaller than five acres – spread across 1 million acres of federal land adjacent to the Colorado River and Grand Canyon National Park, a federal official told Congress in June. Most are uranium claims, though some may be for other metals, observers say.

Such numbers and testimony about pollution have begun to move Congress. Following congressional hearings, the House Natural Resources Committee in late June declared an emergency withdrawal of 1 million acres from any mining claims. The federal land in question is on the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon, just outside the national park, through which the Colorado River flows.

While a federal lawsuit and injunction have temporarily stalled uranium development in the national forest on the south rim, Congress’s action is being resisted by the Bush administration on the north rim.

There, lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management are unaffected by the lawsuit to the south and exploration claims are still being processed routinely.

One such claim, by Quaterra Alaska Inc., the US subsidiary of Vancouver-based Quaterra Resources, Inc., was approved for exploratory drilling on June 27 – just two days after the House’s Natural Resources Committee vote that should have stopped such action.

A Department of Interior spokesman says the BLM is still processing claims because the agency doesn’t consider the Congressional vote valid. In a July letter it argued that the committee didn’t have a quorum, a point disputed by the committee’s chairman and the House parliamentarian.

Mining regulations are tougher now

“They are charging forward,” says Taylor McKinnon, public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group based in Tucson, Ariz.

Last month, the US Department of Energy approved 42 square miles for an expanded uranium mining program in the watershed of the Dolores River, a tributary of the Colorado. But the question of what impact dozens of new uranium mines across the entire Colorado River watershed might have – an environmental disaster or an energy bonanza with few ill effects – remains hotly debated.

“Old mines like the Orphan were mined in the 1950s under no federal regulations whatsoever,” says Eugene Spiering, vice president of exploration for Quaterra. “Most mines today are above the water table, which makes chances of leakage practically nil. What we have now is a well-regulated industry.”

Still, there has been no regionwide environmental assessment of the likely impact of a new uranium mining boom on the Colorado River, close observers say. Nor is such an evaluation apparently of much interest to federal land managers, if comments on the subject by a Department of Interior spokesman are any guide.

“We already have the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and others that require comprehensive analyses before any mining is done, so there won’t be impacts to the environment,” says Chris Paolino, a spokesman for the Department of Interior. “At this time we’re still evaluating plans on an individual basis, but [a regional study is] not something I can rule out.”

“We hear from the industry and federal government that today ‘we can do it safely,’ ” says Roger Clark, air and energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental watchdog group. “But the burden of proof is on the proponents. Somebody needs to ask, ‘What is the cumulative threat to drinking water in the Colorado River – not just from radioactivity, but from arsenic and mercury from these mines?’”

Some are asking for exactly such a study. With cities like Phoenix relying on clean Colorado River water, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) is calling for an “overall environmental im­­pact analysis,” citing the uranium boom’s “potential to seriously harm” the water quality of Grand Canyon National Park and the Lower Colorado River.

Uranium company officials say fears about radioactive contamination are overblown. New mining methods, far tougher environmental standards, and desert-dry conditions for most mines mean minimal risk to the Colorado River and the region’s precious groundwater resources, they say.

“Yes, there were issues in the past,” says Ron Hochstein, president of Denison Mines, a Toronto-based company with at least nine mines under development in the area targeted by Congress. “But that’s not the way we do things today. We understand and know a lot more about uranium, radium, and radon and the impacts of those. So to say some things that happened in the 1950s and 1960s will happen again today is not a good comparison.”

Proven deposits are likely to be mined

Whether or not the thousands of unproven claims are ever developed, a fair number of uranium mining sites seem almost certain to reemerge. “Congress’s action only applies to unproven claims,” Mr. Clark points out, leaning against a fence at the Canyon Mine site.

Denison’s group of established mine sites – including the Canyon Mine in the Kaibab National Forest a few miles south of the park – are among those likely to reemerge. The Canyon Mine was mothballed in the 1980s – before it had even opened – because of sinking uranium prices. It is a proven site: Uranium is there. Denison must still apply for new state environmental permits in order to proceed, but expects its mines to begin opening around 2010.

Despite Horn Creek pollution, the good news is that recent studies have shown that most springs and creeks in the Grand Canyon still have good water quality: Uranium and other trace metals appear in low concentrations, according to congressional testimony.

The bad news, experts say, is that digging into the cylindrical vertical rock formations in which uranium is found – they’re called “breccia pipes” – can “mobilize” the uranium, causing it to oxidize when water from periodic downpours seeps down through the rock strata.

Indeed, the negative impact of water on uranium mines should not be minimized even in the desert, says Chris Shuey, a scientist who directs the Uranium Impact Assessment Program, a nonprofit research and information center. His research in the Churchrock area of the Navajo Nation near Gallup, N.M. – where uranium was mined and processed between 1952 and 1983 – showed statistically significant effects on human health from the elevated levels of radioactivity in the region.

While much uranium in the region does occur in formations above the water table, the bottom of the breccia pipes are located in the upper portion of the Redwall Limestone, a principal aquifer supplying springs in the Grand Canyon and wells for much of the region, Dr. Shuey told Congress in March.

“When you take uranium and the other trace elements out of their resting places in nature and expose them to the environment,” Shuey says by phone, “you expose them in higher concentrations to the environment and intensify their effects. People don’t appreciate the cumulative impact of mining in a consolidated area. There’s a very real threat.” A flash flood swept through Havasu Creek last week. That same watershed includes the Canyon Mine and numerous uranium claims.

Abe Springer, a hydrologist and researcher at Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, has made a career studying the movement of groundwater through the Redwall and other aquifers into seeps and springs that supply not only hikers, but also most of the region’s animal life with the water they need to survive.

“Once these elements became mobile through mining activities,” Dr. Springer told Congress in his March testimony, “they would continue to be mobile through the aquifer and eventually discharge in springs impacting the human uses of water of these springs.”

Even so, some industry figures dispute any connection between the Orphan uranium mine and higher radiation in Horn Creek.

A “fact sheet” e-mailed by Quaterra’s Mr. Spiering says, regarding water pollution, that “statements that the historic operations at the Orphan Mine have been polluting Horn Creek are false.” It cites a 2004 US Geological Survey study showing dissolved uranium in a range from 8.6 to 29 parts per billion and “within the EPA levels of safe drinking water.”

Closer look at USGS study

But a closer examination of the 2004 results finds that some uranium concentrations are at the upper end of the safe range for Horn Creek.

The same study’s results for nearby Salt Creek (at 29 to 31 p.p.b.) “approached or exceeded the US Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standard” of 30 p.p.b., according to Shuey’s testimony to Congress.

The two creeks – Salt and Horn – also had by far the highest levels of the 20 springs and seeps tested in that study, Shuey testified. That USGS study also did not seek to assign causes of the higher radiation levels, he noted.

But the potential impact of tainted groundwater on native Americans, hikers, and local wildlife – as well as major cities downstream – are all reasons Rep. Rául Grijalva (D) of Arizona has sponsored legislation to permanently withdraw federal land around Grand Canyon National Park from uranium mining.

“I hope we’ve matured enough not to forget history,” Representative Grijalva says in a phone interview. “Protection of water quality in the Colorado River is vital to the long-term health and safety of humans and other species. We can’t afford to simply issue permits and decades from now simply dismiss the consequences as unintended.

“We should know better than that.”