Other federal laws, such as Superfund and the Clean Water Act, are occasionally stretched to cover problems stemming from old mines. But without a specific federal law aimed at hardrock-mining reclamation, cleanup is difficult to enforce. In the absence of direct federal regulation of hardrock mining, states tend to be in charge, and the efforts and successes are as varied as the states. Despite the fractured nature of hardrock-mining regulation, most participants agree that, when implemented, the regulatory system is a punitive process with little flexibility. Regulators, the mining industry, and most environmental groups concur that regulation needs to be relaxed to allow for incremental cleanups.
Some cleanup is better than none, they reason.
Recent attempts to reform the 1872 Mining Law have tried to establish a reclamation process that is fair and encourages responsible stewardship. To date, reclamation efforts have succeeded mainly in eastern coal mines, where federal law now requires coal-mine owners to pay fees that can be used to reclaim old coal mines. Proposed reforms for hardrock mining would parallel the coal reclamation law, imposing royalties and fees on hardrock mining and directing a large portion of the proceeds toward reclaiming old hardrock mines. Chemical pollution is most commonly associated with the gold-mining practice of cyanide heap leaching, in which ore is treated with a cyanide solution to free the gold. Even small-scale placer mining can cause adverse impacts on aquatic ecosystems.