Miners Take Note: Plans Afoot to Make Federal Lands in Washington's Okanogan County Permanently Off-Limits to Mining.

According to a news item in Friday's Everett Herald, Senator Patty Murray of Washington introduced legislation in Congress last May to ostensibly, "protect water, salmon and other natural resources in the upper watershed of the Methow Valley."

The bill, which was heard in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, is titled the "Methow Headwaters Protection Act of 2016" (S.2991) and would withdraw just over 340,000 acres of federal forest land in Okanogan County from "location, entry, and patent under the mining laws."

It appears that, should the legislative assault fail, the Forest Service is concocting an end-run around the existing law by taking administrative steps to shut down Okanogan County mining.  The Herald piece reports that Leslie Weldon, deputy chief of the Forest Service's national forest system and a witness in favor of Murry's bill at Thursday's hearing, plans to coordinate with the Bureau of Land Management in effecting a "temporary" withdrawal from mineral activity of the 340,000 acres in question.

Readers should be aware that these measures are likely only the first in a series, the objective of which is a complete ban on all mining and prospecting activities in Washington State.

Readers should also be aware that these measures are in direct conflict with Title 30 United States Code Section 21a which states, in pertinent part:

The Congress declares that it is the continuing policy of the Federal Government in the national interest to foster and encourage private enterprise in (1) the development of economically sound and stable domestic mining, minerals, metal and mineral reclamation industries, (2) the orderly and economic development of domestic mineral resources, reserves, and reclamation of metals and minerals to help assure satisfaction of industrial, security and environmental needs, (3) mining, mineral, and metallurgical research, including the use and recycling of scrap to promote the wise and efficient use of our natural and reclaimable mineral resources, and (4) the study and development of methods for the disposal, control, and reclamation of mineral waste products, and the reclamation of mined land, so as to lessen any adverse impact of mineral extraction and processing upon the physical environment that may result from mining or mineral activities.

How the "continuing policy of the Federal Government...to foster and encourage private enterprise in the development of economically sound and stable domestic mining, metal and mineral reclamation industries" is served by a complete ban on all mining activities on the public lands administered by the Forest Service and the BLM is a mystery to this writer.  Perhaps Senators Murray and Cantwell (S.2991's only cosponsor), together with Forest Service Deputy Chief Weldon, would care to explain?

How to Find an Abandoned Mining Claim in 9 Easy Steps

For those interested in having a mining claim of their very own, it helps to remember that claims are sometimes abandoned by their holders or forfeited for failure to comply with the requirements for maintaining them.

If you could get a list of recently abandoned and forfeited claims you might --  with a little research to confirm that no one else has already grabbed them -- find one you could file on and obtain for yourself.

Fortunately, such a list is available from the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  Better yet, you can get it on-line for free.  The BLM even has a free tutorial document that explains step-by-step how to go about customizing such a list to your geographical area of interest.  The link to the BLM tutorial document is:

http://www.blm.gov/lr2000/lr2000pubrpts/FrequentlyQueries/LR2000_How_to_use_action_codes-MC.pdf

As I discovered some differences between the current web pages and those described in the BLM tutorial, I have written out the steps below as I found them at present:

Step 1 - Connect to the LR2000 website at http://www.blm.gov/lr2000.

Step 2 - Click "Run Reports" on the main menu at the top left-hand side of the page.

Step 3 - Scroll to the bottom of the page and under "Public Mining Claims Reports" click "Pub MC Action Code."

Step 4 - On the page that appears, check the boxes for "Action Code," "County," and "Action Date." Then click the "Select Criteria" button at the bottom of the page.

Step 5 - Under "Mandatory Criteria," click the "Set" button next to "Admin State" and then click on the name of the state in the scrollbar box that administers the state you are interested in.  Then click the "Close" button next to "Admin State."  If your state is not listed, it is administered by another state.  States that administer more than one state and those they administer are WY (NE, WY), MT (MT, ND, SD), NM (KS, NM, OK, TX), and OR (OR, WA).  Since I am interested in finding abandoned claims in Washington, I chose "OREGON" as the Admin State.

Step 6 - Also under "Mandatory Criteria," click the "Set" button next to "Action Code" and then click on "631 - CLAIM ABANDONED/FORFEITED" in the scrollbar box.  Then click the "Close" button next to "Action Code."

Step 7 - Under "Optional Criteria," click the "Set" button next to "County" and then click on the name of the county you are interested in from the list in the scrollbar box.  Then click the "Close" button next to "County."  In this case, I chose "Chelan" as the county.

Step 8 - Also under "Optional Criteria," click the "Set" button next to "Action Date" and then click the down arrow at the right-hand end of the drop-down box labeled, "Please select an Operator."  Select "Between" and type the dates in the box labeled "Enter Action Date."  Since the deadline for renewing most mining claims is September 1, enter the two dates separated by a comma. In this example I entered, "09/01/2015, 01/01/2016" to get all the claims that closed between September 1, 2015 and January 1, 2016.  After entering the dates, be sure to click the green check-mark to the left of the box containing the dates to transfer them to the data box below the date entry box.  Finally, click the "Close" button next to "Action Date."

Step 9 - Now click the "Run Report" button at the bottom of the page.

You should see a pop-up box listing the criteria you selected.

If everything looks correct, click "OK" to run the report.  Otherwise, click "Cancel" to make any necessary changes to the information you entered in the previous steps.  If you clicked "OK," you should see a box that says, "Query in process.  Please wait."  After a few seconds the report will appear on your computer screen.  I suggest clicking the "Export to PDF" icon in the menu-bar at the top of the page as doing this will give you the full report as a down-loadable document.

That's it!  You now have a list of the mining claims that were abandoned or forfeited between the dates you entered in the report set-up form.  IMPORTANT:  BLM advises that it can take up to THREE MONTHS for closed claims to appear in their reports.  My advice would be to run reports frequently -- perhaps daily -- beginning on September 1 until at least December 1 to be sure you don't miss any claims.

Now that you know how to harness the power of the BLM's computers to locate potential mining claims, you can turn those otherwise unproductive winter months into a period of fruitful enterprise.  Happy prospecting!