Minerals & Mining Advisory Council Year End 2015 Progress
MMAC is now releasing the rev 40 of the Mineral Regulatory Reform Act proposed bill. It incorporates the concerns of miners from the past end of summer submissions. We have removed the notion that MMAC or the Mining Districts would become an agency beholden to any U.S. President. Instead, the bill expands, clarifies and empowers the Mining District’s role as arbiter of reasonable regulations. MMAC has struggled over the fact that the Mining Districts could have liabilities if they were strictly rule makers and that is why we were previously leaning towards an agency status in order to give the Mining Districts qualified immunity. The Mining Districts acting as arbiters of reasonable regulation place them squarely within a judicial capacity invoking immunity.
The www.mmacusa.org website has been clarified and upgraded to show the progress of MMAC and PLP. The new rev 40 of the MMAC bill is available on the site for download. A large database of traditional Mining District bylaws are forming on the website for the miners to download. Scott Harn with the ICMJ is taking the lead in breaking hundreds of Mining District bylaws down by State and County level.
The challenge MMAC is having right now is creating a cost effective database in order to contact claimholders via e-mail or phone regarding the MMAC bill or notifications of Mining District elections. Presently, we have a joint proposal to the Western Mining Alliance to fill this need and who already have this database. BLM’s LR2000 only has names and addresses. We are also hopeful that Joe Martori (when he can break loose of his busy schedule) can set up a teleconference in January with the MMAC regional administrators so these boots on the ground have instructions and can lift some weight off of the rest of us.
Feel free to post this and send this to other miners interested on where MMAC is right now.
Background information on MMAC’s objectives can be found by reading Miners Making the Rules and Regulations.
If you are not getting responded to by the MMAC website and need more info call (530) 273-0420 until such time MMAC administrators contact numbers are made available on the MMAC website.
Those organizations that wish to partner with MMAC and that share MMAC’s objectives are asked to contact us.
-Clark Pearson, Interim coordinator for MMAC