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Three-fifths of the Democrats in Nevadas congressional delegation agree with the states only Republican in Congress, Rep. Mark Amodei: If theres one thing the federal government should do, that thing is whatever mining wants.

Amodei got a bill passed on the floor of your United States House of Representatives this week.

First, congratulations, Congressman. A representative getting the House to pass a bill was no small thing even back in what might be thought of as saner times. The good ship Saner Times having sailed, the current Republican-controlled House, despite recent life signs, remains on pace to be the least productive in decades.

And it looked like that stunning record of mayhem-enriched underachievement would likewise doom Amodeis bill, which went belly up on the House floor last week when someone evidently forgot to tell a few Republican members of a narrowly divided House that there was work that day.

But there was a mining industry to protect, dadgummit, and Amodei, a former president of the Nevada Mining Association (while he was still in the state Senate ha ha is that the Nevada Way or what?), would not be denied.

If passed by the Senate and signed by the president, the bill would erase a 2022 federal court ruling that tried to impose a small measure of long-overdue sense on another law that was sponsored by a Nevadan on behalf of the mining industry 150 years earlier, the General Mining Law of 1872.

Background: A couple years ago in what is known as the Rosemont decision, a federal appeals court said when mining companies stake claims on federal land, and they find minerals on that land, mine away, as per usual, under ye olde 1872 law. But! The court also ruled and this was new that companies cant use adjacent federal land on which no valuable minerals have been proven to exist as part of the mining operation. So no filthy slag heaps on the other side of the road, that sort of thing.

Amodeis bill aims to overturn the Rosemont decision, and thus make filthy slag heaps on the other side of the road great again.

The vast majority of House Democrats, including Nevadas Dina Titus and Susie Lee, voted against Amodeis bill. But there were eight Democratic exceptions, one of whom was Nevada Rep. Steven Horsford, who is reliably eager to demonstrate fealty to Nevadas mining industry.

Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was predictably giddy over the House passing Amodeis bill, her being a lead co-sponsor of companion legislation in the Senate.

Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is one of that measures co-sponsors, which wont win her many votes in the rurals this year, but at least should help dissuade the mining industry from spending any money against her in her reelection campaign.

A similar and successful safeguarding of the mining industrys bottom line earned Cortez Masto a small assist from the industry in the rurals during her 2022 reelection campaign.

Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is also a co-sponsor, so between her, both Nevada senators, and all Republicans, its conceivable the bill could pass the narrowly divided Senate. If Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer lets it come up.

Mining corporations and the politicians who love them have been urgently stressing how vital their industry is to national security. That emphasis, almost always accompanied by saying China a few times, helps put the critical in critical minerals.

After House passage of his bill this week, Amodei didnt disappoint. Securing our domestic mineral supply chain is not only critical to our nations economic success, but to our national security, he said.

When touting the Senate version of the legislation last year, Cortez Masto said we must produce minerals in the United States and not solely rely on foreign sources, some of whom threaten our national securityAll of this means we must address the complications created by the Rosemont decision.

And on multiple occasions, Cortez Masto has warned that the Rosemont decision will upend the mining industry.

Evidence suggests otherwise: The same mineral deposits at the heart of the terrible horrible no good very bad Rosemont decision the example Cortez Masto refers to when she says the decision will upend mining are included in an Arizona mining complex currently being developed by the same Canadian corporation that was developing the Rosemont mine. Except now the project is bigger. And instead of Rosemont, its called Copper World.

If enacted, the Amodei-Cortez Masto legislative effort to reverse the Rosemont decision, like a call from Cortez Masto and Rosen to allow lithium mining corporations to get tax credits against extraction costs, may help Nevadas nascent lithium industry and other newly developing critical mineral mines save a buck or two and pass those savings on to shareholders the world over.

But whether the Rosemont decision is left intact will have no impact whatsoever on the certainty or scale of future mineral production. That will be determined by the price of the mineral. Period.

That doesnt mean the legislation is meaningless.

It could potentially enhance returns for mining corporation shareholders.

It could provide Rosen yet another opportunity to make a campaign ad celebrating how much she loves to stand up to Democrats and vote with Republicans.

It confirms yet again that there is a contingent of Nevada Democratic politicians who believe Nevada should remain a mining colony.

And, most consequentially, it would assure massive hills of mining waste where they dont belong, on public lands that arent even being mined, doing what massive hills of mining waste always do: contaminating soil, water, and air, far into the foreseeable future.

See more here:
3 out of 5 NV congressional Democrats want to let the mining industry party like it's 1872 Nevada Current - Nevada Current