Alan Lowenthal: “I was puzzled when I read the bill title, the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act, and then went on…”

“I was puzzled when I read the bill title, the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act, and then went on to read the bill text. Surely there must have been a mistake when drafting this bill. Strategic and critical minerals were certainly not meant to include sand, gravel, and clay. But right now, section 3 of this bill is written so broadly that it would include very common nonstrategic and noncritical minerals--even going so far, as I mentioned, to encompass materials such as sand, gravel, and clay. The Interior Department recently testified before my colleagues on the Natural Resources Committee and confirmed that this is, in fact, exactly the case. The bill that we are now considering is written expansively beyond critical minerals. The Interior Department testified: This legislation would remove many of the environmental safeguards for almost all kinds of hardrock mines on public lands, bypassing evaluation of potential impacts under NEPA, and limit public involvement in agency decisionmaking. That's why I introduce an amendment that would simply narrow the bill's definition of purported strategic and critical minerals to actual strategic and critical minerals, as defined by the National Research Council. Why is my amendment critical?…”