Hard mineral mining is up and may be taxed

Hard mineral mining doesn't get the media coverage of coal mining, but it's an industry that affects many rural communities across the country as evidenced by a trio of recent stories. The value of U.S. mineral production was up nine percent to $64 billion in 2010 from the previous year, suggesting "that the nonfuel minerals industries, particularly metals, were beginning to recover from the economic recession that began in December 2007 and lasted well into 2009," the U.S. Geological Survey writes in a news release announcing the agency's annual report of mineral production statistics. The report also breaks down which minerals are extracted in each state and includes valuable maps that pinpoint hotspots for a particular mineral in each state. (Read more)

Currently, mining companies owe virtually nothing to the federal government in royalties for gold, silver, copper and other minerals mined in the U.S., but in his budget proposa, President Obama called for a five percent royalty on minerals extracted from new projects on public lands. "The amount of revenue projected in the first few years from this royalty is minuscule (in terms of the federal budget), about $7 million or less a year," Felicity Barringer of The New York Times reports. "But the principle of subjecting international mining giants like the Newmont Mining Corporation and the Barrick Gold Corporation to the same kind of royalty regimen that is a way of life for oil, gas and coal companies is significant, no matter the size of the initial revenue." A 2009 bill that would have placed a royalty on such minerals died in the Senate. (Read more)

Residents of Yerington, Nev., have filed a class-action lawsuit against BP America and the Atlantic Richfield Co., accusing the companies of  "intentionally and negligently concealing the extent of the contamination leaking off the abandoned site for decades," Scott Sonner of The Associated Press reports. The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Reno seeks a minimum of $5 million on behalf of at least 100 Yerington residents who live near the old Anaconda copper mine, which opened in 1941. "The plaintiffs say the wells they once used for drinking water are polluted with uranium, arsenic and other metals in a plume of groundwater that slowly has migrated off of the site," Sonner writes.

"The lawsuit says that even after whistleblowers started to publicize previously secret records documenting the dangers, the corporations refused to cooperate with state and federal regulators trying to clean up the radioactive and other hazardous waste the past 10 years," Sonner writes. Tom Mueller, a spokesman for BP America, told Sonner that company officials have not had a chance to review the lawsuit and had no immediate comment. (Read more)