Warning For Mining Claim Owners

[Clay Diggins]

1 hour ago, Redz said:

I wonder how much actual consultation with stakeholders they did? Does this even feature in their decision making?

There was zero consultation. We received notice well after the fact.

The BLM removed the owner names once before. From January 21 - April 1 of 2021 all of the customer information was removed from their database. That was a disaster for claim owners and the BLM. Someone put them back on the right course back then, we can only hope someone will be there to do that again.

The BLM mining claims database consists of nearly 250 tables - there is about about 32 Gb of data in those tables. The customer tables are an important part of that structure with many tables depending on the customer tables to be complete.

Land Matters for several years had a good working relationship with the BLM. We participated in several stakeholder projects including the MLRS development. For the last couple of years the BLM has become uncommunicative and unresponsive - we no longer receive the updates and notices the BLM used to share with their stakeholders regularly. Getting an actual response to a question now usually results in replies so far off base you have to wonder if they even read the question - if they even respond. From what we have heard this is now standard procedure for the BLM, it's not just Land Matters getting this treatment.

There are some good people in the BLM. I've known several thorough the years. Most of the people we relied on in the BLM have now quit. Virtually everything is run by private contractors now and we aren't allowed to contact them directly unless they are one of the contractor assigned Public Relations employees. I'm sure there are still some good people at the BLM ...

Reducing public access to public information is not a appropriate policy direction for any Federal agency but it is particularly disturbing that the record keeper for the public domain has decided, without notice, to limit the public's access to the mineral ownership status of those public lands.

Barry

[Redz]

My understanding is the federal government is required to go through a process of stakeholder consultation in decision making, at least in rule making, but I think more broadly. It would seem this violates due process.

[Steve Herschbach]

I can provide a tiny bit of insight on this. My brother in law has worked at BLM cadastral for eternity. He is literally one of the last old timers left in his department, with everyone else of his generation having retired in the last 10 years. What has been retiring is institutional knowledge, and the new people simply lack that decades long learning and mellowing that can only come with time. BLM is trying hard to hold onto some of the older people as a result, but in general it seems like a lot of the boomer generation like myself are now retired or are retiring, and the results of that are showing up all over the place in government and elsewhere. "The person that knew that retired" is heard a lot.

The pandemic really accelerated this, as many people who might have stuck around a bit longer got frustrated and tossed in the towel. I’ve seen it lately every time I try to hire somebody to do anything. Yeah, the old plumber retired, and the new kid does not know what he knew. Customer service everywhere has taken a real hit in the last couple years. I got so frustrated trying to get my oil changed on my car I just went and got a new drain pan, tire ramps, oil, and oil filters, and did it myself, and will from now on. All the oil change workers quit for higher paying jobs!

[jasong]

This stuff isn't broken or needing fixed from what I can tell. They have intentionally shut it down for ambiguous "privacy review" reasons. Sounds like it will be back...sometime. Which hopefully doesn't turn into a de facto permanent shutdown.

"The MLRS Community site is offline as a precautionary measure following a routine privacy review. Please note that there is no indication of any privacy violations or of data being compromised.

We are addressing the concerns raised in the privacy review. While we don't yet have an exact timeline, we are working to get the site back online as quickly as possible and appreciate your patience."

I was however able to pull reports still, just not on the MLRS mapping site. I can't however see a way to file maintenence fees anymore, or paperwork. 

Hilariously, I can still search and pull reports by customer name, but then they just censor the name out "XXXXXXX". So, not sure what the point is.

*For those who file FLPMA docs instead of paying maintenence, it does say that you have to now file either through mail or in person hard copies now. Something to be aware of if you wait until the last day to go online and discover it's not there and then you are hosed if the PO is closed.

[Redz]

Interesting privacy claim, when property ownership is a matter of public record. All these claims are filed at the county level too, where they are listed by name. Are they going to remove names on everyones house ownership too?

[delnorter]

Thank Barry, for all you and your people do for the mining community as well as all the other folks who use “Land Matters”. An amazing collection of information on one site. Check it out if you haven’t.

Mike

[Steve Herschbach]

You might be surprised about who is filing some of the invasion of privacy complaints and who would just as soon it’s not easy to find claim location information. I tried pushing for a streamlined totally online claims filing, mapping, and payment system years ago, and the miners I was working with shut the idea down fast.

[jasong]

Looks like they just released the newest bi-weekly data extract, so that's good, they are still doing something with their claims database anyways and it's not abandoned.

For anyone curious and with database/programming skills: You can request the BLM include you on a mailing list and give you an account to download the entire claims database locally onto your computer. From there you can convert it to whatever, throw SQL commands at it, import into Excel (good luck, it's huge) or do anything else you wish to sort and search through all the claims. Closed, active, etc. 

Fair warning, it's a massive database and requires a lot of resources to manipulate and acquire. So, I'd say "power users only" and not for anyone who isn't really computer literate and knows DB and scripting.

When you get to the point of really researching a number of areas with heavy claim density, it's pretty much the only way to do it from a time-standpoint. The people I contacted are all gone, so not sure who to contact anymore, but probably anyone who works with LR2000 in the BLM would know. 

[Clay Diggins]

Land Matters did update their Mining Claim Maps today.

I've received a lot of calls and emails from claim owners saying their claims were closed in error. Some State BLM offices have admitted there are errors and are in the process of fixing them.

If your claim was closed it may have been reopened. There were 1,791 new claims since the mass closures. Maybe your claim has been reopened and is one of the "new" claims? Here's a tip on how Land Matters makes that easier to find.

TIP: Land Matters Mining Claim maps all have a map display layer named "New Claims". This map layer is turned off when you first start the mining claim map. If you select the checkbox next to "New Claims" and click the reload map control all the claims that have been located since the last update will be highlighted in red. You can even uncheck the other claim layers and the only mining claims displayed will be the claims located in the most recent update.

Barry

[cobill]

Barry, 

An update from CO...my claims are now considered ACTIVE and OK, but names and addresses are still XXXX...looks like this is for privacy reasons: