U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) this week led a letter to
the Departments of the Interior (DOI) and Agriculture (USDA), questioning
whether they would produce a report outlining options to improve the federal
mineral permitting process on the timeframe required by federal law. Under
Section 40206 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the
Departments were required to complete the report within one year of
enactment—which is today—but have failed to adhere to that statutory deadline.
U.S. Senators Dan Sullivan (R-AK), James Risch (R-ID), Mike
Crapo (R-ID), and Kevin Cramer (R-ND) also signed the letter.
The Senators wrote, in part:
“As you may know, Section 40206
requires the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, acting through the
Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, to improve the quality
and timeliness of the federal permitting and review process for critical
mineral production on certain federal lands.
“The section lays out nine ways
to improve permitting [and] establishes a deadline of one year from enactment
for your Departments to issue a new report that identifies additional
regulatory and legislative measures that would increase the timeliness of
permitting, ensure adequate staffing for the timely consideration of
authorizations on federal land, and quantify the period of time required to
complete each step of the permitting process.
“The nine improvement
priorities and the report are the basis of a new performance metric required
under Section 40206 to meet the permitting and review process improvements it
requires and will serve as the basis of new annual reporting to Congress to
accompany the President’s budget.
“These are serious and
substantial requirements that represent a first step to address serious
deficiencies in the federal permitting process. Yet DOI and USDA have outwardly
paid little attention to them, and internally appear to have devoted critical
resources to discretionary projects that trace back to Executive Orders, rather
than legally binding federal statutes…
“As our mineral security and
foreign mineral dependence become more important at a time of rising global
demand, Congress remains focused on a variety of means to encourage new
domestic production.”
To read the full letter, click
here.
Background:
Section 40206 of
the bipartisan infrastructure law is drawn from the American Mineral
Security Act, which Murkowski sponsored and Sullivan, Risch, Crapo, and
Cramer all cosponsored.
Rather than focusing on the statutory requirement to
complete the permitting report and associated work, DOI and USDA have instead
prioritized a discretionary Interagency Working Group that has pursued mining
law reform, especially new royalties and fees that would raise the costs of
hardrock mining and limit domestic supply.
Murkowski’s letter follows a series
of letters she and Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe
Manchin (D-WV) sent to multiple departments and agencies in May 2022,
questioning their failure to implement several critical mineral mandates from
the Energy Act of 2020.
It also follows Biden administration-led setbacks and
delays for a number of key mining projects across the country, including the
Ambler Access Road in northwest Alaska.
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