Repeal the General Mining Act of 1872

Repeal the General Mining Act of 1872. This 153-year-old law lets mining corporations extract billions of dollars in minerals from our public lands and pay American taxpayers nothing — not a royalty, not a fair market price, not a dime. The Mineral Policy Center estimates these companies pull $2 to $3 billion in minerals from public lands every year, all while the land price set by the 1872 law hasn't changed since Ulysses S. Grant signed it: $2.50 to $5.00 per acre. The damage isn't just financial. Thousands of abandoned hardrock mines are draining toxic metals into rivers and drinking water right now. The Gold King Mine spill dumped 3 million gallons of acid wastewater into the Animas River watershed in 2015 — and that's one incident among countless others. Congress has tried and failed to pass meaningful reform through multiple Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Acts since 2007. Incremental fixes have gone nowhere. Our public lands deserve full protection, not another watered-down royalty bill that still lets extractive industries treat federal land as a private resource. End this giveaway and close public lands to hardrock mining exploitation for good.