Both Sides Dig In for Battle Over Mining : Resources: Reformers charge the law controlling work on public lands is a rip-off. Miners say changes would hurt the nation.

The last time Congress made a serious bid to reform the 119-year-old law controlling mining on public lands, it provoked an uproar across the West and led to a recall petition against then-House Interior Committee Chairman Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.).

Now the battle pitting reformers and environmentalists against the hard-rock mining industry and Western conservatives is being joined again, with proponents of tighter regulation enjoying their brightest prospects in years for ending what they consider a multimillion-dollar giveaway.

In recent weeks, 166 witnesses have testified in field hearings before a subcommittee of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. On Tuesday, a Senate panel again took up a proposal by Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), which would end the sale of mining claims for as little as $2.50 to $5 an acre, require miners to pay federal royalties on minerals extracted from public lands and order all miners to file reclamation plans before beginning operations.

Debated at a hearing by a subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Bumpers’ proposal was immediately opposed by mining-state senators, who raised the specter of the United States becoming dependent upon foreign countries for strategic minerals, and Bush Administration officials overseeing public-lands policy.

Cy Jamison, director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, suggested that massive reforms contained in Bumpers’ legislation would put small miners out of business, create unemployment and produce “an administrative nightmare” in the collection of royalties.

Congressional sources expect the battle to be perhaps the most fiercely contested environmental issue through the summer and fall.

Next week, the issue will be joined again before a House Interior subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W. Va.), who in recent weeks has conducted crowded public hearings from Nevada to Alaska.

Like Bumpers’ bill, Rahall’s measure has wide opposition in the hard-rock mining industry because it would do away with “patents,” which have been available to miners since President Ulysses S. Grant signed the mining law.

As the law stands, mining claims may be staked on federal lands and retained indefinitely as long as a miner performs $100 worth of work on the site each year. With proof that a valuable mineral deposit has been found and $500 worth of work performed, the miner can obtain a deed or a “patent” for the land for as little as $2.50 per acre.

Critics say that the government is regularly fleeced when property thus obtained is then turned into housing developments, shopping malls or ski runs.

In spite of the massive opposition from mining-state congressional delegations, supporters of reform say that they are more hopeful than they have been in years because Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) has succeeded Udall as chairman of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee.

After the popular Udall saw his Arizona political career jeopardized by his support of reform, the issue languished in the House. But Miller, whose chief congressional interest is the oversight of publicly owned natural resources, has made it one of his priorities as chairman.