URGENT CALL TO ACTION
PLEASE SHARE WITH EVERY GOLD CLUB AND MINING CLAIM OWNER:
Mining claim owners……….BLM has just released its new 2017 budget proposal and guess what, they are attempting again to eliminate the small miners waiver. For those miners who own 10 claims or less, one can file the small miners waiver for about $10.00 per claim making holding a claim affordable. What this proposal will do is eliminate this and make holding mining claims so costly that most miners will not be able to hold them or afford them.
The proposal is almost word for word what they proposed last year which raised the fee’s by unbelievable amounts. Last years proposal was shot down, this one needs to be as well.
Imagine you own a claim of 160 acres, you pay property taxes on it and your small miners waiver fee, that is still affordable at typically under $100 annually. What this will likely do is raise that amount you pay for this one claim from $10 (waiver) to over $1,200 for that same claim. For Associations and clubs like GPAA, Coarsegold, Delta, East Bay and UPI, their costs could go into the 10’s of thousands or even more. Let that sink in for a minute.
This is all by design folks, they cannot attack the 1872 mining act, so they just use regulation and strangling fees to make it so expensive that the normal miner and gold club cannot afford it. They are trying to require special permits to mine……..but then don’t issue permits or even have a process in place to apply for the permit they say you need.
Fees, yellow-legged frog, sue and settle, EPA, BLM, USFS, DFG the list goes on an on. We have to band together and when things like this come up, you must respond.
Call your Congressperson today and tell them to strike this language from the budget proposal period. Here is a link to find your Congressperson…..make the call.
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/
Here is a link to the actual text proposed by BLM to raise the fees, it is on page BH-11. This does not pertain to just hard-rock mining. If you read the actual language, it is written to be inclusive and will affect placer claims.
http://www.blm.gov/…/news_release_atta…/FY2017_BIB_BH007.pdf