For the first time since 1993, the Bureau of Land
Management has revised its fees for mining claims (HCN, 3/8/93:
Mining reform may hit paydirt in 1993). Now, to mine or
drill a claim on BLM land, users will have to pay a $30 one-time
claim fee, plus $125 per year — unless
they’re “small entities” with fewer than 500 employees and
less than $5 million in annual revenue. The agency expects the 25
percent boost in rates to raise $38 million annually.
More scientists are signing on to protest the White House’s
misuse of science (HCN, 3/1/04: Follow-up). In July, the Union of
Concerned Scientists updated an earlier report on federal science
to include mountaintop-removal mining, salmon management in the
Northwest, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s
management of bull trout and swans. The 4,000 scientists who signed
on in support of the report include 48 Nobel laureates and
127 members of the National Academy of Sciences.
One of the largest proposed timber sales in
recent history apparently isn’t big enough to satisfy the
timber industry. The American Forest Resource Council, a
trade group representing private landowners and mill owners, has
filed a lawsuit to speed up “restoration” or logging of areas
burned by the 2002 Biscuit Fire (HCN, 6/21/04: High-stakes logging
plan gets go-ahead). Says AFRC president Tom Partin: “If this is
the best our federal government can do to rehabilitate and restore
this area, then it is time for Congress to take a serious look at
modernizing and updating our environmental laws and put
some common sense back into natural resource management.”
The wrong waste has been going to
WIPP: In mid-July, the New Mexico Environment Department
found that mixed waste, including explosives, from the Idaho
National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory had been trucked
to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico, which is
licensed to accept only transuranic radioactive waste (HCN, 9/1/03:
Follow-up). “We suspect this has been happening since March,” says
Jon Goldstein, a spokesman with the state. Some improper
shipments have been turned back en route to WIPP, while others have
made it underground and into the salt caverns.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Follow-up.
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