STATEMENT OF

Bill Brancard

Director, Mining and Minerals Division

New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department

On Behalf of the

Interstate Mining Compact Commission

And the State of New Mexico

Re: Oversight Hearing on

# 

# HARDROCK MINING: ISSUES RELATING TO ABANDONED MINE LANDS AND URANIUM MINING

Before the

U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

MARCH 12, 2008

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. Thank you for
inviting the State of New Mexico and the Interstate Mining Compact
Commission to testify today. I am Bill Brancard, Director of the Mining
and Minerals Division of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural
Resources Department.

Today I will speak about the impacts of hardrock abandoned mines and the
roles we do, and can, play in addressing these threats. I will focus on
New Mexico's experience with abandoned mine issues and in particular
highlight the issues surrounding abandoned uranium mines.

I am also representing the Interstate Mining Compact Commission (IMCC),
an organization of 24 states located throughout the country that
together produce some 95% of the Nation's coal, as well as important
hardrock and other noncoal minerals. Each IMCC member state has active
mining operations as well as numerous abandoned mine lands within its
borders and is responsible for regulating those operations and
addressing mining-related environmental issues, including the
reclamation of abandoned mines. Over the years, IMCC has worked with the
states and others to identify the nature and scope of the abandoned mine
land problem, along with potential remediation options.

New Mexico has a long and distinguished mining history. Native Americans
mined coal, turquoise, lead, and copper hundreds of years before
Europeans arrived in North America. Spanish exploration and mining began
in the late 1500s and expanded across the state. The nineteenth and
twentieth centuries witnessed a number of mining booms across the State
driven by the search for coal, gold, silver, copper and uranium among
others. Today, New Mexico is home to some of the largest active coal and
hardrock mining facilities in the United States.

Centuries of mining have also left another legacy: thousands of mine
openings and other mine hazards that pose serious threats to public
health and safety. Since 1990, we are aware of at least five fatalities
at abandoned mines in New Mexico. Numerous other serious injuries and
costly rescues have occurred at these mines. In addition, abandoned
mines across New Mexico pose significant threats to property and the
environment through pollution, subsidence and underground fires.

Nationally, abandoned mine lands continue to have significant adverse
effects on the environment. Some of the types of environmental impacts
that occur at AML sites include subsidence, surface and ground water
contamination, erosion, sedimentation, chemical release, and acid mine
drainage. Safety hazards associated with abandoned mines account for
deaths and/or injuries each year. Abandoned and inactive mines,
resulting from mining activities that occurred over the past 150 years,
are scattered throughout the United States. The sites are located on
private, state and public lands.

Over the years, several studies have been undertaken in an attempt to
quantify the hardrock AML cleanup effort. In 1991, IMCC and the Western
Governors' Association completed a multi-volume study of inactive and
abandoned mines that provided one of the first broad-based scoping
efforts of the national problem. Neither this study, nor any subsequent
nationwide study, provides a quality a quality, completely reliable, and
fully accurate on-the-ground inventory of the hardrock AML problem. Both
the 1991 study and a recent IMCC compilation of data on hardrock AML
sites were based on available data and professional judgment. The data
is seldom comparable between states due to the wide variation in
inventory criteria, a topic I will address later in my testimony.
Nevertheless, the data do demonstrate that nationally, there are large
numbers of significant safety and environmental problems associated with
inactive and abandoned hardrock mines and that remediation costs are
very large.

In New Mexico, we estimate that there are roughly 15,000 abandoned mine
hazards that need to be addressed. While New Mexico still has abandoned
coal mines that need addressing, well over 90% of the 15,000 figure are
abandoned hardrock mines. Across the West, the number of abandoned
hardrock mines has been estimated at several hundred thousand. Many of
the states report the extent of their respective AML problem using a
variety of descriptions including mine sites, mine openings, mine
features or structures, mine dumps, subsidence prone areas, miles of
unreclaimed highwall, miles of polluted water, and acres of unreclaimed
or disturbed land. Some of the types of numbers that IMCC has seen
reported in our Noncoal Report and in response to information we have
collected for GAO and others include the following: Number of abandoned
mine sites: Alaska -- 7,000; Arizona -- 80,000; California -- 47,000;
Colorado -- 7,300; Montana -- 6,000; Nevada -- 16,000; Utah -- 17,000 --
20,000; Washington -- 3,800; Wyoming -- 1,700. Nevada reports over
200,000 mine openings; Minnesota reports over 100,000 acres of abandoned
mine lands.

What becomes obvious in any attempt to characterize the hardrock AML
problem is that that it is pervasive and significant. And although
inventory efforts are helpful in attempting to put numbers on the
problem, in almost every case, the states are intimately familiar with
the highest priority problems within their borders and where limited
reclamation dollars must immediately be spent to protect public health
and safety or protect the environment from significant harm.

Estimating the costs of reclaiming hardrock abandoned mines is even more
difficult than characterizing the number of mines. If you accept the
estimates of the number of AML sites, you can develop a very rough
estimate for the costs of safeguarding mine hazards and reclaiming small
surface disturbances. But the costs of remediating environmental
problems such as ground water and surface water contamination, acid rock
drainage or wind blown contaminants are extremely difficult to estimate.
And many of these problems will not even be detected unless a thorough
assessment and testing occurs at a site.

Today, state agencies are working on hardrock abandoned mine problems
through a variety of limited state and federal funding sources. Various
federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau
of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, Army Corps of Engineers and
others have provided some funding for hardrock mine remediation
projects. These state/federal partnerships have been instrumental in
assisting the states with our hardrock AML work and, as states take on a
larger role for hardrock AML cleanups into the future, we will continue
to coordinate with our federal partners. However, most of these existing
federal grants are project specific and do not provide consistent
funding. For states with coal mining, the most consistent source of AML
funding has been the Title IV grants under the Surface Mining Control
and Reclamation Act (SMCRA). Section 409 of SMCRA allows states to use
these grants at high priority non-coal AML sites. The funding is
generally limited to safeguarding hazards to public safety (e.g.,
closing mine openings) at hardrock sites.

A work about the AML program under SMCRA -- a state-led program that has
worked exceptionally well: During the past quarter of a century,
significant and remarkable work has been accomplished pursuant to this
program for addressing coal AML problems. The Office of Surface Mining
Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) and the states have documented much of
this work. (See the 2006 Accomplishments Report published by the
National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Programs and OSM's twentieth
anniversary report.) OSM's Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System (AMLIS)
provides a fairly accurate accounting of the work undertaken by most of
the states and tribes over the life of the AML program and also provides
an indication of what is left to be done.

Over the past 30 years, tens of thousands of acres of abandoned mine
lands have been reclaimed, thousands of mine openings have been closed,
and safeguards for people, property and the environment have been put in
place. There are numerous success stories from around the country where
the states' AML programs have saved lives and significantly improved the
environment. Suffice it to say that the AML Trust Fund, and the work of
the states pursuant to the distribution of monies from the Fund, have
placed an important role in achieving the goals and objectives of set
forth by Congress when SMCRA was first enacted -- including protecting
public health and safety, enhancing the environment, providing
employment, and adding to the economies of communities impacted by past
coal and noncoal mining.

As states work to address the remaining inventory of abandoned coal mine
sites, the states are increasingly concerned about the escalating costs
of addressing these problems as they continue to go unattended due to
insufficient funding. Unaddressed sites tend to get worse over time,
thus increasing reclamation costs. Inflation exacerbates these costs.
The longer the reclamation is postponed, the less reclamation will be
accomplished. In addition, the states are finding new, higher priority
problems each year, especially as many of our urban areas grow closer to
what were formerly rural abandoned mine sites. New sites also
continually manifest themselves due to time and weather. This
underscores the need for constant vigilance to protect our citizens. In
addition, as states certify that their abandoned coal mine problems have
been corrected under SMCRA, they are authorized to address the myriad
health and safety problems that attend abandoned noncoal/hardrock mines,
which are subject to all of the above concerns.

Until recently, the SMCRA AML program was the primary consistent source
of funding for New Mexico's hardrock AML program. Over the past six
years, New Mexico's average \$1.5 million annual grant was roughly split
between coal (55%) and hardrock (45%) projects. In December 2006,
Congress amended the SMCRA AML program to distribute funds to states in
an amount equal to that previously allocated under SMCRA but never
appropriated. For New Mexico, this amounts to approximately \$20 million
in additional AML funds distributed over the next 7 years. However,
while Section 409 was not changed or amended in any way, the Interior
Department has now interpreted SMCRA to prohibit this enhanced funding
from being used at noncoal projects. This is a significant blow to
states such as New Mexico, Utah and Colorado which have previously used
SMCRA AML funds to address many of our more serious hardrock AML
problems.

The reform of the General Mining Law provides an opportunity to
establish a consistent, and robust, funding source for addressing
hardrock AML problems. We would like to address a few components of any
hardrock program established in new legislation. First, any program to
distribute funds for hardrock mine reclamation should allow for states
and tribes to receive funding and conduct AML projects. Today, there are
abandoned mine land programs in most states. These include the 28
programs established by states and tribes under SMCRA Title IV. A number
of states that are not eligible for Title IV funding, including Nevada,
California, Arizona, have robust hardrock AML programs as well. All of
these states and tribes are experienced with administering federal
grants and completing AML projects, including projects on federal land.

It is essential that the states be provided an opportunity to assume
primary responsibility for implementing the AML program given the unique
differences among the states in terms of geology, climate, terrain and
other physical and environmental conditions. Each state should also be
provided the discretion to determine which among the many AML sites in
its respective inventory of sites deserves the most immediate attention.
The states can also best decide the appropriate remediation required
under the circumstances given available funding. This state lead
approach will assure the most critical AML problems are addressed first,
since the states are closer to the problems and can make a better
determination about priorities and actual remediation work.

In New Mexico, we have used SMCRA Title IV funds to address a number of
significant AML problems, both coal and hardrock, on BLM and Forest
Service land. In addition, our AML Program has cooperative agreements
with both the Forest Service and BLM that allow those agencies to fund
AML projects on their lands when money is available. It is simply more
efficient for the federal land managers to use our agency with its staff
of experienced engineers, reclamation specialists and project managers
to design and conduct an AML project. Given the importance of the states
being able to access SMCRA Title IV funds for noncoal AML work, any new
legislation should ensure that this practice can continue.

Second, the legislation should recognize that most hardrock AML problems
are on non-federal lands, even in the West. In most states, federal
lands contain less than a quarter of all hardrock AML sites. In part,
this is due to the patenting of mining claims in the nineteenth and
early twentieth century that led to mining occurring on private land.
And when there are abandoned mine problems on federal lands, they often
spill over into adjacent non-federal lands or in-holdings. To be
effective, a hardrock AML program needs to be able to spend funds on all
classes of land.

A critical component of any reclamation program is prioritization of
sites and identification of remediation options. Abandoned mine lands
range from sites that require no remediation because of their size or
minimal risk impact and sites which require revegetation for erosion
control, to shafts and adits that present public safety hazards and
sites with significant toxic leachate contamination of ground and
surface waters. Regardless of the inventory or listing of sites being
used, there will be a large portion that require little if any
reclamation or for which the per unit cost of reclamation is relatively
small. These sites will also rank low in priority because of the reduced
threat to public health or the environment. On the other end of the
spectrum, there will be a small number of sites that require a
significant amount of funding to remediate and that constitute a chronic
risk to public health or the environment. Under current law, these are
the sites that are being or might be remediated under Superfund (the
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act
(CERCLA)). The AML priority sites should be those that constitute a
physical threat to public safety, and sites with significant
contamination, but that will never score high enough to be remediated
under CERCLA.

Another aspect of any hardrock AML program is the process of quantifying
the problem. A consistent and cost-effective inventory of AML problems
may be needed. However, lessons need to be learned from the inventory of
abandoned coal mines undertaken pursuant to the Surface Mining Control
and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), which is estimated to have cost more than
\$25 million and is still fraught with controversy. Based on the SMCRA
experience, any hardrock AML inventory needs to: have well thought out
goals and instructions; maintain standardized inventory procedures; keep
inventory crews small to minimize inconsistencies in reporting methods;
minimize the influence on the inventory by those with vested interests
in the results; require any federal agency inventory work to be
coordinated with the states; utilize state-of-the-art GPS imagery; and
be conducted with consideration for seasonal vegetation cover. In the
end, there should also be a cap placed on the amount of money to be
invested in any inventory effort so as not to divert money and energy
from on-the-ground reclamation work.

There are many other components to an effective and efficient AML
program. The states have significant experience in this area, based on
our work under SMCRA and with AML programs in other non-SMCRA states
such as Nevada, Arizona and California. Among the other areas that
should likely be addressed in fashioning a hardrock AML program are:
reclamation program elements; reclamation standards; priorities for
cleanup; set-aside accounts for special circumstances such as acid rock
drainage; emergency situations; and funding distribution mechanisms. We
would welcome the opportunity to work with the Committee and others to
address all aspects of a hardrock AML program that is led by the states
and coordinated with our federal partners.

I have also been asked to address the problems that New Mexico, and
other Western states and tribes, face with uranium mine cleanups. Our
experience here will highlight many of the issues I have previously
mentioned. New Mexico was one of the leading producers of uranium in the
world in the period of the 1950s through the early 1980s. While this
period is later than much of the hardrock production which populates the
AML sites in many Western states, it predates many of the significant
state and federal environmental and mine reclamation laws. As a result,
many of these uranium mines were largely unregulated and left a legacy
of safety hazards and environmental contamination which has a long way
to go to be completely abated.

In the past year, the State of New Mexico has been inventorying closed
uranium mines to determine how many sites remain to be remediated.
Similar projects are being conducted by the Navajo Nation and the U.S.
EPA on tribal land. We created a data base with all uranium mines that
reported production and correlated that list with all records of
reclamation work conducted under federal, state or tribal laws and
reclamation projects conducted by federal, state or tribal agencies.
These include cleanups under federal laws such as the Uranium Mine
Tailings Radiation Control Act (UMTRCA) and CERCLA, or state laws such
as the New Mexico Mining Act or Water Quality Act, or cleanups conducted
with SMCRA Title IV funds by the Navajo Nation or New Mexico AML
programs. We found that over 50 % of the uranium mines (137 of 259) have
no record of any reclamation having occurred or currently required by a
government agency.

These sites are generally older uranium sites (1950s and 1960s era) and
have smaller production than sites where cleanups have been, and are
being, conducted under other laws. Even so, at minimum, the cleanup cost
is estimated to be at least \$50 million. However, this number does not
include any costs for environmental cleanups such as water quality
remediation, residential remediation or waste removal. Additional
environmental remediation would multiply the minimum estimate. The State
of New Mexico and the Navajo Nation are currently investigating these
sites to determine what reclamation work is necessary and what funding
sources could be used to conduct these cleanups. The State and the
Navajo Nation are also seeking ways to conduct cooperative projects in
areas where jurisdiction is unclear.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I thank you for this
opportunity to share New Mexico's and IMCC's perspective on abandoned
mines and mining law reform. Again, welcome the opportunity to work with
you in fashioning a meaningful hardrock AML program as part of mining
law reform.