This issue comes to us under the banner of "Good Samaritan," giving it the Biblical luster of a well-known parable. But as we take up this issue, I am reminded of a verse from Proverbs (16:16), "How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver!"

Today, I urge my colleagues to consider the folly of our hardrock mining policies with renewed wisdom and to understand the mess left by 134 years of mining conducted under a now-badly outdated law.

For multiple generations, hardrock mining companies have been profiting by extracting gold, silver, and other valuable minerals from our lands only to pull up stake and leave behind scarred and battered landscapes. These huge companies have often operated without mercy for the lands or nearby communities. They are able to do so, in large part, because the tarnished, antiquated Mining Law of 1872 that contains no environmental protection provisions. As a result, the headwaters of 40 percent of Western waterways are polluted by mining, and hundreds of thousands of abandoned mine sites litter the West – including 87 sites so toxic they have been designated as Superfund sites.

Under the guise of easing the burden on well-intentioned folks who simply want to clean up someone else’s mess, the so-called "Good Samaritan" proposals coming forward would actually make it easier for hardrock mine companies to get away with making the mess in the first place.

Instead of giving hardrock mine companies a free ride, I have, as many of my colleagues know, long advocated reform of the Mining Law of 1872 as a means to achieve both a fair return to the public on the production of hardrock minerals from public lands, and the reclamation of abandoned mined lands using those returns or royalties. In fact, I began my efforts son after I became Chairman of this Subcommittee in 1987. We came close to enacting a major reform bill in 1994. Unfortunately, since then, the Republican Majority has done nothing to further this cause. In fact, the gears of reform have notably shifted into reverse.

In May, the Bush Administration proposed the "Good Samaritan Clean Watershed Act," a proposal that purports to promote the cleanup of inactive and abandoned hardrock mines by limiting liability from certain environmental laws to innocent parties who volunteer to provide partial cleanup of such sites. Instead, it has the potential to give the owners of hardrock mines a free pass from liability under the Superfund and the Clean Water Act requirements.

Rather than enacting such flawed legislation, I urge my colleagues to look to HR 3968, the "Federal Mineral Development and Land Protection Equity Act of 2005" a bill that I introduced along with a bipartisan group of colleagues. Our legislation would prohibit the continued giveaway of public lands. It would require that a fee be paid for the use of the land, and that a royalty be paid on the production of valuable minerals, such as gold and silver, extracted from Western public domain lands. It would, as well, require industry to comply with some basic reclamation standards to ensure long-term protection of the environment both during mining and after it has been completed.

This legislation would not only bring outmoded mining law into the 21st century, it would also set a solid accountable course for the future of a thriving industry. For too long now, the hardrock mining industry has taken advantage of the lax law that allows them to extract valuable minerals from public lands for free – the last thing that industry needs is another free pass.

Clearly, the environmental damage caused by hardrock mining and the dangers posed to nearby citizens are a result of weak and, at times, non-existent mining regulation. The Administration’s proposal does nothing to remedy that. Their idea of Good Samaritan is simply bad public policy.