Mining Regulatory Clarity Act

This bill expands how much public land a hardrock mining operator can claim for mining support activities. It amends Section 2337 of the Revised Statutes so an operator holding a lode or placer claim may locate as many mill sites as are reasonably necessary for its operations under an approved plan of operations. A mill site covers waste rock or tailings disposal and other work incident to mineral development. Each single mill site is capped at 5 acres. A mill site conveys no mineral rights and cannot be patented, and it may sit on the same tract of public land as an existing lode or placer claim. The bill also creates the Abandoned Hardrock Mine Fund in the Treasury. Claim maintenance fees collected on these new mill sites are deposited into the Fund, and the Interior Secretary may spend that money without further appropriations only to carry out the abandoned mine land program in section 40704 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The final section rewrites fee references in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 to point at current mining law citations.

At least 18 organizations named this measure in a lobbying filing. A floor, not a total: they were counted by the client name on 111 quarterly reports filed by 5 lobbying firms and by 11 organizations lobbying for themselves in 2025 Q1, 2025 Q2, 2025 Q3, 2025 Q4, 2026 Q1, 2026 Q2 and 2026 Q3. An organization that lobbied this measure without naming it is not counted here.

3 of those filings did not cite this bill by number. They named a short title it shares with its Senate companion, S 544, so the reference belongs to the pair rather than to one chamber’s vehicle.

The filings record that lobbying was reported on the measure. The form has no per-bill dollar figure and no field for a position, so nothing here says how much was spent or which side an organization took.

5 of them, in no ranking: Kinross Gold U.S.A., Inc.; Defenders of Wildlife; League of Conservation Voters; Newmont Mining Corporation; Barrick Gold of North America Inc. Listed as filed, in the order the filings were read, and 13 others are not shown. These are not the largest, the earliest or the most active: we keep five names per measure, and the filings give no ranking.

From the LD-2 quarterly lobbying filings published at lda.gov by the Senate Office of Public Records. Read for 2025 Q1, 2025 Q2, 2025 Q3, 2025 Q4, 2026 Q1, 2026 Q2 and 2026 Q3. Our copy holds 24 fewer filings for 2025 Q1, 39 fewer filings for 2025 Q2, 42 fewer filings for 2025 Q3, 33 fewer filings for 2025 Q4, 28 fewer filings for 2026 Q1, 48 fewer filings for 2026 Q2 and 218 fewer filings for 2026 Q3 than the Senate's register counts, so those quarters are the filings we could read rather than every one filed. 2026 Q4 is still inside its filing window, so that quarter is only the filings posted so far.