Sale of public lands opposed

DENVER — Critics ranging from environmentalists to hunters are denouncing a mining proposal tucked in a massive budget bill as a push to sell tens of millions of acres of public land in the West to the highest bidder and gut environmental reviews of oil and gas drilling and other development.

The provisions in the bill by the House Resources Committee are aimed at updating the 1872 mining law, long criticized for selling off federal lands in some of the country's most scenic areas for rock-bottom prices: $2.50 to $5 an acre. However, opponents say the language of the new bill is so loose that anybody with the money can stake a mining claim and buy the land without having to actually mine it.

Representatives of the House Resources Committee and a trade group dismissed as "greatly exaggerated" claims that the measure would open more than 200 million acres of federal land to development.

The bill would increase the price of mining lands to $1,000 an acre. Critics, though, contend it would also open much of the federal land in the West to development — from building ski resorts to mountaintop trophy homes — under the guise of reforming a law dating to the administration of Ulysses S. Grant.

Two committees have approved the bill, which could be considered by the full House as early as today.

"This could be the biggest privatization in the last 75 years of federal land," said John Leshy, the Interior Department's top lawyer during the Clinton administration.

A big concern for many people is loss of access to public lands if companies go in and file claims, said Mat Millenbach of Billings, Mont., a former manager of the state Bureau of Land Management office and avid outdoorsman.

Contained in the 184 pages of the House budget reconciliation bill, which is intended to save money and cut the deficit, are provisions making it easier for anybody to stake claims and buy the land, said Leshy and Roger Flynn, director and managing attorney with the Colorado nonprofit law firm Western Mining Action Project and a mining law professor at the University of Colorado and University of Wyoming.

"This essentially goes back to the robber baron era. As long as you have a big enough checkbook, you can get as much of the land as you want," Flynn said.

Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said the bill has loopholes "big enough to fly a C-130 through."