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Small Miners Wavers To Be Eliminated By BLM


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The BLM has proposed eliminating the SMALL MINER'S WAIVER for those of us who own ten (10) or fewer mining claims. This could be extremely costly and we are the only ones who can stop this. Here is the wording that I have cut-n-pasted from the BLM's information: "The proposal also increases the annual maintenance fees under the General Mining Law of 1872 and eliminates the fee exemption for miners holding ten or fewer mining claims." So, what we need to do is contact our members of congress and specifically ask that this be removed from the BLM budget. Get everyone you know who wants to save the small mining community to do the same. Explain why you are doing so. Write original letters, send them to your representative's district offices AND to their offices in DC. Call them if you can. This has to be stopped and only we can do it. The more it costs to hang onto our legitimate claims the less they are worth. While most of us cannot operate our claims full time, we should be able to keep them without paying more and more in fees. The small miner's waiver was created to protect the "little guy" and now the BLM is trying to get rid of it so we must protect ourselves and our most powerful weapon is the written and spoken word - directly to our elected officials. PM me for more if I can help in any way.


Here is a link to the BLM budget https://www.doi.gov/…/appr…/2016/highlights/upload/BH007.pdf

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Seems like the part directly preceeding that where there is legislation to eliminate the claiming process entirely and move to a lease-only system is an even bigger change.

The one time I looked into a mineral lease through the BLM it was "around $6000" just for the application processing fee, though that might have been a special case. But it also required a full environmental assessment too, just like with a full plan of operations, even just to prospect on the lease with a metal detector.

Valuable information would be to know what the proposed lease fee schedule is, and if the new changes would require leases just to prospect or only to mine, and if so where they draw the distinction between the two are at. Will there still be a difference between NOI and POO level operations for instance too?

I think the waiver should be decreased anyways personally (yeah I know no one agrees), but moving to a lease system goes a full measure further, it basically nulls out 1872 and that could be the endgame right there...or am I misreading something? If not, more info is required here.

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A while back I had a long discussion with a member of the BLM legal staff. You can thank the paper hanging website salesman types for having a large part in creating these new regulations. At one point one of these websites had over 60 claims for sale and none recorded with the BLM. We don't police our own. Instead we invite them as guest speakers at mining conferences.

 I would gladly pay the fees if I were allowed to mine my claims as the mining laws originally intended.   

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This same proposal has been made for every budget since 1998.

Lots of drama no action has been the result for the last 18 years. Think about this for a minute - a federal agency is asking for fewer duties and responsibilities while asking for a bigger budget.  Very "green" - very BLM.

You can make your own conclusions about it's probable inclusion in the next budget.

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  CD; Your absolutely correct. This proposal has been festering for a long time. I was told in my conversations with BLM that "paper hanging" would be used, in part, for justification of blanket fees.

 On a side note, the person I spoke with at BLM was very helpful, polite and professional. 

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 This was exactly my point in discussions with BLM. A possible solution would be to declare a claim "invalid" or "pending" until BLM fees are paid. In other words you could record with the county and not pay BLM fees and someone could come later, record with the county and pay BLM fees and make the first filing mute and the second filing valid. This way an internet purchaser could see that the claim has not been recorded with BLM and simply file on it himself. 90 days could still be allowed from the date of posting but one would risk loosing the claim if fees were not paid promptly.

 Whatever happened to the miners having a meeting to establish the local mining laws.

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