What’s Mine is Ore: California Groups Call For Polluters to Clean Up Their Toxic Legacy

By Traci Sheehan
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League

Last Thursday at the State Capitol, the Planning and Conservation League joined with Assemblymember Lois Wolk, Environment California, the Environmental Working Group, and the Sierra Fund, to call upon the U.S. Congress to make significant environmental reforms to the outdated 1872 Mining Act.

Specifically, the group urged Congress to ensure that the reforms of the 136 year old law include a key provision requiring prospectors to pay a royalty for mining activities on public lands. This would provide desperately needed money to clean up the pollution caused by mining.

Mining is currently the number one source of toxic pollution in the country and is having a devastating effect on California’s natural environment and public health. In particular, as polluted rivers and creeks wind their way down to the Bay Delta, toxics are poisoning fish and fouling the food chain. Currently, one-fourth of all the fish sampled in the Delta have "high" or "very high" levels of mercury in their tissues, including the large striped bass, largemouth bass, catfish, and sturgeon which are popular among anglers in the Delta. These toxins bio-accumulate, traveling up the food chain, where they can harm humans as well.

Billions of dollars are needed to clean up this ongoing environmental disaster. Reforming the 1872 Mining Act offers a unique opportunity to begin to address toxic contamination by developing a steady revenue stream that finally makes the polluters pay for their pollution. To find out more, contact PCL’s Public Health Program Manager Rene Guerrero.

Traci Sheehan is the Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League, a statewide, nonprofit lobbying organization. For more than thirty years, PCL has fought to develop a body of environmental laws in California that is the best in the United States. PCL staff review virtually every environmental bill that comes before the California Legislature each year. It has testified in support or opposition of thousands of bills to strengthen California's environmental laws and fight off rollbacks of environmental protections.

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