In 1999, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana took to the floor of the Senate to introduce a bill intended to help clean up abandoned and inactive hardrock mines across the western U.S.

“The settlement of the mountain west was driven, in large part, by mining. Take my home state of Montana. At the center of Helena is Last Chance Gulch, where gold was discovered in 1864. Butte was called the Richest Hill on Earth, because of its huge veins of copper. Our state’s motto is ‘Oro y Plata’ — gold and silver,” Baucus, a Democrat, told his congressional colleagues. “Mining has long been critical to our development. It’s created jobs, it’s part of our culture, of our community. But mining, like many other economic activities, can have severe environmental consequences.”

Baucus cited data that there were at least 400,000 abandoned mine sites in the West — a number the Department of Interior now estimates at more than 700,000 — many of which severely impact streams due to runoff.

The bill, “Good Samaritan Abandoned or Inactive Mine Waste Remediation Act,” never made it out of committee.

From 2008 to 2017, the federal government spent $478 million addressing hardrock mines in Montana — more than in any state. A Montana Department of Environmental Quality interactive database shows more than 7,000 abandoned mine features ranging from old gravel pits to exposed vertical mine shafts to tailings piles.

Members of Congress have made several attempts to introduce similar bills, but none stuck until this year.

The Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act of 2024, co-sponsored by Montana’s U.S. Sens. Steve Daines, a Republican, and Jon Tester, a Democrat, was signed into law by President Joe Biden on Tuesday, creating a pilot permitting program to bolster not-for-profit cleanup efforts at mining sites across the country.

“I’m proud to see my commonsense legislation to clean our abandoned mines signed into law by the President — this is huge for Montana communities,” Daines said in a written statement to the Daily Montanan. “For too long, ‘Good Samaritans’ trying to clean our abandoned hardrock mines have been held up by bureaucratic red tape and liability rules, but now we’ll see progress in restoring these lands in Montana and former mining communities all across the U.S.”

Addressing a multibillion dollar project

The new federal law is intended to speed up local government, tribal and nonprofit efforts to clean up abandoned mining projects threatening waters across the West, including in Montana.

The law establishes a pilot program in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to permit the decontamination of 15 low-risk, abandoned mines established before 1980, and give out waivers from federal laws that had been blocking cleanups.

It would also allow federal regulators to certify a nonprofit, state agency or tribal government to do the work. Under the law, these entities designated as “Good Samaritans” would also not have to assume legal responsibility for that work.

Any company with ownership of the mine or a hand in pollution would be barred from qualifying, according to the new law.

“For more than 25 years, Good Samaritans have tried to clean up abandoned mines but have faced significant hurdles and liability rules that hold them responsible for all the pre-existing pollution from a mine — despite having no involvement with the mines before their cleanup efforts,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, said in a written statement.

Heinrich sponsored the bill – whose full title is the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act – with Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho). They had numerous bipartisan cosponsors in the House and Senate.

Hardrock mining refers to digging out minerals outside of coal. Abandoned mines have left a legacy of pollution spills and disasters that cost taxpayers nearly $3 billion to clean up in the last decade – just a scratch on the estimated $50 billion price tag to clean all contamination. Leftover pools with sludges and toxic wastes like heavy metals can seep into soils and be washed into nearby rivers and streams during floods or snowmelt.

The stakes

About 40% of Western headwaters for rivers and streams have been contaminated after mining, according to EPA estimates, but laws around legal responsibility would have required groups volunteering to do the cleanup to assume legal risk under federal laws for the pollution they didn’t create.

Projects that would be excluded include highly contaminated mines where federal agencies are supervising the cleanup, or projects that require digging.

The law opens up more mine cleanup projects that couldn’t be attempted before, said Jason Willis, an environmental engineer with Trout Unlimited who leads a program to clean up mining contamination around the West.

Local and tribal governments, states and nonprofits can already clean up certain types of pollution, like runoff from mine waste piles or tailing piles, which would pollute streams during snowmelt or flooding.

But remediating pollution coming from a single place, like a pipe or outfall, placed too many legal obstacles on a third-party cleanup, said Willis. Federal requirements meant to hold polluters accountable also applied to volunteer third parties trying to clean up. These requirements included assuming legal responsibility and to continue tracking and potentially cleaning the water for the foreseeable future.

The hope is that these pilot projects, which received waivers on federal laws for polluter punishments, can show the proof of concept for future permanent program.

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Willis. “We can potentially do like a 70% improvement in water quality that would then support aquatic life, as opposed to 100% water quality that would be unachievable both financially and long term.”

Finding the right projects across the West will take careful consideration, Willis said, but shrinking water resources from climate change and development make the cleanup all the more important.

“I think these projects are going to be more important in the future to ensure that we have some of those water resources available,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story was co-written with Source New Mexico, also part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.