Your HELP is appreciated. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the toughest mining laws. At the federal level, the code is marked by a distinct absence of hardrock mining laws. Each state has its own approach to regualating hardrock or metallic mining and thus it is almost impossible to compare them.
Some states are better at protecting groundwater than others.
Some have better surface water protections, etc. But there is no state or for that matter, no nation that demonstrates the best regulatory protections with regard to mining-all are rife with exemptions, exceptions and variances that inevitably facilitate mining rather than prohibit it in sensitive places. In sum, they are all inadequate to protect drinking water and surface waters from hardrock mining, especially at a time when mining production rates and practices are mining out larger areas and dumping ever larger amounts of wastes onto the land. Your HELP is appreciated. At the federal level, the code is marked by a distinct absence of hardrock mining laws.