House OKs Interior Bill With Mine Ban
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WASHINGTON — The House passed and sent to the Senate Wednesday a $12.2-billion natural resources bill that retains a one-year moratorium on mining leases on federal lands and permits logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
The Interior Department’s funds are used to manage the national parks, arts agencies and museums, and federal lands. The bill cuts the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities by nearly 40% from last year.
The bill reinstates for fiscal 1996 a moratorium on new low-cost leases of mining rights on federal lands but allows those who have filed claims before the moratorium was imposed in 1994 to go ahead with mining. The measure also blocks the U.S. Park Service from managing a preserve in California’s East Mojave Desert.
The House passed the Interior bill on a vote of 244 to 181.
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