By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, Republican members of Congress have been waging a war to open 1 million acres around the Grand Canyon to uranium mining. Last week Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar took one of the last steps in withdrawing the area from new mining claims. But in response, Republicans have introduced H.R. 3155, the Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act of 2011, to keep the decision from moving forward. The issue has become “one of the top legislative priorities of Republicans in Congress” as Energy and Environment Daily reported this morning.

At a hearing yesterday on the bill in the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forest and Public Lands, Republicans called a witness to the stand who is a retired United States Geological Survey scientist. Dr. Karen Wenrich noted in her testimony supporting the bill that the Bureau of Land Management has “vastly overstated the environmental harm caused by past and potential uranium development.”

However, under questioning from Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), it became clear through public Securities and Exchange Commission filings that Wenrich stands to make $225,000 by selling 61 uranium claims that she owns only if the Interior Department’s withdrawal does not go forward.

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By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Today, Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) asked a set of companies that profit from minerals on public lands to let American taxpayers see if they are getting a fair return. As ThinkProgress reported last month, Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and Grijalva sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking for a comparison of corporate profits and taxpayer benefits from mineral extraction on public lands. Because the GAO report will take over a year to complete, today Grijalva hastened the investigation and sent letters to 14 oil, gas, and mining companies asking them to outline the financial value of the leases on public lands that they own.

In the letters, Grijalva explained his rationale:

I believe in transparency and effective public regulations that balance corporate and taxpayer interests. As I’m sure you’ll agree, taxpayers deserve a full accounting of the economic activity that takes place on land they own, including the public financial benefits.

Grijalva continued in his press release:

Our mineral wealth and public lands belong to the American taxpayers and held in trust by the federal government, but for too long they’ve been handed out to private companies that only care about the short-term bottom line. It’s time they open their books to public scrutiny and show us how much they’re making from cheap leases and how much they’re giving back to the public.

By December 15, the companies are asked to provide a detailed analysis for fiscal year 2010 of: the value of the minerals extracted from public lands, the cost to lease the lands, the royalties and fees paid to American taxpayers, and the projected value of extraction on the public lands mineral leases the companies hold. Most mining companies are not required to pay a royalty to the federal government due to the 1872 Mining Law.

Companies on the list are not exhaustive of all of those that own public land mineral leases, but are a sample of the different corporate interests—oil, gas, coal, copper, gold, and others. They are: Alpha Natural Resources, Barrick Gold Company, BG Americas & Global LNG, BHP Billiton, BP America, CONSOL Energy, Denison Mines, ExxonMobil, Freeport McMoRan, Peabody Energy, Rio Tinto Minerals, Rio Tinto Copper, Shell Oil, and Total Holdings USA.

These letters asking about the profits of some of the wealthiest companies in the world comes just as the House of Representatives will be voting on a bill today to give the third-largest copper deposit in the world to a mining company, without any royalties or returns to the taxpayer from the mineral development. The Resolution Copper Company, which stands to benefit from Congressman Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) bill facilitating the land transfer, is a multinational mining conglomerate owned by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, both of which are on Grijalva’s list to receive letters about their profits.

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Last week, Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking for a formal investigation into the corporate profits and public financial gain from oil, gas, and hardrock mineral extraction (gold, silver, copper, and others) on public lands. The members requested this investigation due to their suspicions that taxpayers are not reaping proper benefits from extractive activities on public lands. As Grijalva said at a press conference last week:

We also feel that there is a taxpayer responsibility that we have as elected officials. Especially in these fiscal times where we are talking so much about fiscal policy, taxpayers, and revenue for government, etc., that we are getting a fair return on our public lands. That there is indeed a net benefit and a cost benefit for the American taxpayer.

From the information that we get, we hope that this debate continues forward. We’ve asked GAO to give us a financial perspective—how much has the taxpayer lost, how much is this land really worth, and what should be the parameters in the future in order to collect a fair return for the American taxpayer.

Watch it:

The request to GAO is simple. The lawmakers asked GAO analysts to study two questions in particular:

- What was the amount of minerals extracted from federal land and the Outer Continental Shelf and what was the estimated dollar value of these minerals?
- How much did the federal government collect for these minerals, including royalties, rents, and bonuses, and how was this amount determined?

Hardrock mining companies are protected from paying any royalties to the federal government and taxpayers under the 1872 Mining Law, which was enacted during the years of manifest destiny to encourage mineral prospecting in the West.

This 139-year-old law is still in place, and one study estimates that taxpayers will lose $160 million every year without reforms to it. This is of particular importance because many foreign companies are mining uranium, gold, and copper, and, as one advocate put it, “are taking advantage of that loophole and literally taking the United States citizens’ minerals for free.”

Additionally, oil and gas companies have also historically paid less than what the public lands that they drill are worth. A 2007 GAO report found that one offshore drilling royalty relief bill passed in 1995 will “likely cost the government billions, but the final costs have yet to be determined.”

The “objective analysis of the business of mining and mineral leasing on federal lands,” as Udall put it, is anticipated to be completed next summer.

Today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar demonstrated his conservation leadership by halting the race to mine uranium at the edge of the Grand Canyon National Park for six months, and setting the stage for a full 20-year withdrawal. As John Podesta and other conservation leaders stated in their request several weeks ago, this move by the administration is necessary to protect one of America’s greatest assets and one of the world’s natural treasures.

For those of you that do not follow the politics of our public lands, this might seem like an obvious choice, made simply to capture headlines about protecting Grand Canyon National Park. However, when it comes to public lands these days, it requires a fight to protect even the greatest of places.

Back in 2008, the New York Times broke the story that a British company had begun exploratory drilling just miles from one of the main entrances to Grand Canyon National Park. This shined a national spot light on a mining boom that was growing across the West.

Many of the foreign-owned mining companies responsible for the boom were staking claims right outside national parks. The Pew Environment Group’s Ten Treasures at Stake report depicts in great detail the growing threat. Data from the Bureau of Land Management cited in the report shows that in 1995 there were less than 100 mining claims in uranium-rich areas near the Grand Canyon. By 2007, that number grew to more than 6,000 mining claims, and today there are more than 8,000.

In 2009, Salazar temporarily stopped new claims by issuing a two-year moratorium so the Department of the Interior could study the impacts of uranium mining on Grand Canyon National Park. Without today’s announcement, the clock would have run out at the end of this month. Salazar issued today an emergency withdrawal order that extends the moratorium another six months, until a final environmental impact statement can be issued. Salazar also announced that he has directed the preferred alternative in the final rule to be a full 20-year withdrawal of the threatened lands around the Grand Canyon.

Politicians had lined up on both sides of the debate. More than 60 Democrats, led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), sent a letter asking Secretary Salazar to fully withdraw 1 million acres for 20 years in order to stop new mining claims. At the same time, Republicans Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Trent Franks (R-AZ) requested that Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) hold a hearing questioning “the Administration’s perceived environmental concerns” about uranium mining creating a “serious national security threat.”

This political divide should come as no surprise, especially when one considers that the National Mining Association donates three times more to Republicans than it does to Democrats.

However, Gosar was quick to capitalize on the Grand Canyon’s popularity to promote the oil industry agenda. “Arizona’s First Congressional District is home to countless popular vacation destinations such as the Grand Canyon National Park,” he wrote in a press release. “If gas prices continue to soar, our local communities could be hit hard by decreased tourism and fewer visitors.”

Where is that concern for the tourism impact that would be caused by countless mines popping up next to Grand Canyon National Park? What about the impact on the Colorado River that sustains the National Park and provides drinking water to 25 million Americans? The list of reasons for protecting Grand Canyon National Park is long and wide ranging.

Still, some conservative leaders feel it’s better to play up fears of government overreach than recognize that some places should be protected.