Babbitt Reluctantly Sells Federal Land for a Pittance

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, lamenting what he called a “tawdry process” mandated by a 19th-Century mining law, Wednesday signed over title to federal land containing more than $1 billion in minerals to a Danish mining company for $275.

Using props dating from the time of President Ulysses S. Grant, who signed the 1872 Mining Act, Babbitt called upon Congress to end what he called a “flagrant abuse of the public interest.”

The act still allows miners to take title to government land for as little as $2.50 an acre and to pay no mineral royalties. The $275 purchase price is the same fee that would have been charged for the land in 1872.

At a news conference, Babbitt displayed a photograph of Grant and signed the deed with a pen made in the 1870s.

“You might reasonably ask, how can a public official give away a billion dollars without going to jail?” said Babbitt.

“The fact is, I have no choice. This corporate welfare has been going on nonstop for 124 years and the U.S. Congress is the only place that can bring a halt to this.”

But it seems unlikely that Babbitt and the Clinton Administration will succeed in embarrassing the Republican-led Congress into approving a comprehensive reform of the 1872 law. In 1994, when his own party controlled the House and Senate, Babbitt staged a similar press conference when he signed over land containing about $10 billion in gold to a Canadian firm for about $10,000--and Congress still refused to overhaul the statute. At the time, Babbitt called that deal “the biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy.”

The 108.8 acres of federal land granted to an American subsidiary of Faxe Kalk Inc. on Wednesday is in Clark County, Ida., and contains rich deposits of travertine, which is used to whiten paper.

Jack Gerard, spokesman for the Mineral Resources Alliance, a trade group, called the news conference “a publicity stunt.”