Legislation that would make it easier to clean up abandoned mines is one step closer to the president’s desk.
The Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, and Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week.
The legislation received unanimous support in the U.S. Senate earlier this year, but still needs to pass the full House before it can make it to the president’s desk.
Heinrich has been pushing for this law for years as it would help organizations that have never had a stake in the mine clean up the environmental hazards left behind on a voluntary basis without facing potential liability for past pollution.
There are more than 140,000 abandoned hardrock mine features in the country and more than 22,000 of those pose risks to the environment, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
New Mexico has seen first hand what can happen when an incident occurs at these mines.
The Gold King Mine spill in 2015 is one such example. The mine is located near Silverton, Colorado, but the watershed around it flows into the Animas River that enters New Mexico north of Aztec. The communities in San Juan County saw the Animas River turn a mustard yellow color due to the mine spill, which was triggered by EPA contractors.
Heinrich visited farmers impacted by the spill in the wake of the incident in 2015 and heard firsthand about their concerns.
After this spill, the focus turned toward Good Samaritan legislation. While allowing third party organizations to clean up abandoned mines might not have prevented the Gold King spill, it could help address some of the other abandoned mines dotting the mountain slopes around Silverton.
The legislation Heinrich has sponsored won’t just clear the way for anyone to go in and start working on abandoned mines. Instead, it creates a pilot permitting program that is intended to enable nonprofits to work on cleaning up the mines while also ensuring that the people on the ground doing the work have both the skills and resources necessary to comply with federal oversight.
“Tens of thousands of abandoned mines continue to threaten our communities and pollute the land, water, fish, and wildlife we rely on. We should be empowering ‘Good Samaritan’ organizations who want to step up to help clean them up,” Heinrich said in a press release. “I’m proud to see our commonsense, bipartisan legislation that would create a path for these groups to clean up abandoned mine sites in New Mexico and across our country move one step closer to final passage in the House. I won’t stop working on this until we get this through the House and to the President.”
