Last May, I wrote about a deregulatory measure introduced by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jim Risch (R-ID): S.1281, the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2023. This legislation, under the pretense of “reforming” the General Mining Law of 1872, aimed to strip away key environmental protections including the landmark Rosemont Mine Decision, which restricts the disposal of toxic mining waste on public lands. 

This May, members of the House, including Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), voted to pass the same bill: H.R. 2925, the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2024, introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) and Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK). This legislation was applauded by Cortez Masto and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), in stark contrast to the Biden administration’s vehement opposition.

As this bill progresses to the Senate and the open arms of Nevada’s delegation — who have received donations of $63,375 (Cortez Masto) and $7,898 (Rosen) from mining entities in their most recent campaigns — we must be honest about the true purpose of the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act. The goal of H.R.2925, S.1281 or any other moniker it takes is to overturn the Rosemont Decision, one of the most vital rulings on federal mining law in the 21st century.

The controversy that sparked the Rosemont Decision was a mine proposed by the eponymous Rosemont Copper Company, a subsidiary of the internationally human rights abuse-accused Hudbay Minerals Inc. During May 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court upheld the order of District Court Judge James Soto to block development of the mine. 

Soto’s 2019 ruling rectified the assumption under which the Rosemont mine was proceeding: that the company had rights to dispose of waste rock on public land that was outside of its operational claim. This area in Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains includes tribal gravesites as well as the last sighted jaguars in America. 

The Rosemont Decision set a national bulwark for all public lands by clearly establishing that mines had to maintain their waste within claim borders. A claim, as defined for more than 150 years under the General Mining Law, is the area on which prospectors have demonstrated the presence of economic mineral reserves. In other words, a mine must prove a substantive reason for occupying public lands for its operations, including the storage, processing and disposal of its own waste. 

Nullifying the Rosemont Decision would devastate the ability to mitigate mining impacts and allow for waste to be dumped on public lands without oversight. It would permit unregulated deposition of acid-laced and heavy metal-bearing pollution on potential groundwater conduits, sensitive habitats, sacred territory or simply areas of natural enjoyment and recreation. Remediation efforts would be further debilitated because the waste would not be within the defined and recorded boundaries of mining claims.

Despite thoroughly documented harms to Indigenous sovereignty and the environment that persist due to underregulation of modern mining, proponents of the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act pitch it as a green bill. This paradoxical spin conflates loosened accountability for mining with sustainability because the critical metal resources of some operations, such as lithium and nickel, are needed for renewable energy infrastructure. 

Even if it were true that expanded leniency for these critical metal mines would not incur the risk of severe environmental damage — a notion soundly disproven by the Rosemont copper mine itself — the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act is a sweeping deregulation for all types of mining. And, as demonstrated by many of the ever-increasing lithium claims perforating the West, the presupposition that producing minerals for renewable systems alone aligns a mine with sustainability is an unscientific and uncritical generalization that does nothing but create vulnerabilities for at-risk water resources and the health of the land.

Those who disparage the Rosemont Decision and frame repealing it as progress are, in my most charitable interpretation, deeply ignorant to the externalities of mining. The actors working most directly to enact this deregulation are mining company executives and politicians — influential and informed officials who could only avoid facing these realities through unsustainable priorities and an apathy for the consequences of them. 

The mining lobby and its allies in D.C. such as Cortez Masto and Amodei bemoan the Rosemont Decision as an obstacle — rather than seeing its value as a common sense procedure of due diligence for managing extraction on public land. Common criticisms point to the most egregious circumstances of the Rosemont case. Factors including native burial grounds and critically endangered species are cited to argue that the regulation is grounded in an anomalously flagrant example of mining impact.

However, this argument only proves the necessity of the Rosemont Decision: This ecological and cultural disaster was only averted through a judicial reassessment of a mine that was otherwise approved under federal law. The lesson of Rosemont is that our mining regulations are fallible and underdeveloped. Responsibly developing these massive industrial ventures demands intersectional scrutiny from the moment a claim is staked, as well as meaningful accountability that is unfulfilled by current laws and undermined even more by H.R.2925.

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act and its sponsors are threatening wilderness and historic sites nationwide by attacking the Rosemont Decision. Portraying this as a “reform” is an intellectually dishonest cover for an industry handout, and deregulating the already anachronistic 1872 mining law — which continues to lack any written consideration of the environment or limitations to how much water a mine can consume — is a glaring threat to the biodiverse and drought-stricken Southwest.

This bill is a radical step backwards for the already privileged and powerful mining industry. It concerns not only heavily mined states such as Nevada, but public lands across the country and any who would wish to see them preserved for future generations. The modern demand for critical metals does not excuse or justify further relaxing the nation’s antiquated mining laws. On the contrary, this decisive period illustrates a need and opportunity to modernize how mines operate in the United States, and the fight for equitable mining justice remains an integral part of securing a truly sustainable future. 

Dexter Lim graduated magna cum laude from the University of Nevada Las Vegas with a Bachelor of Science degree in earth and environmental science with a minor in political science. They are currently a student of the Berkeley Law J.D. Class of 2027.

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