Bureau of Land Management Maintenance Fee Waivers for Small Miners

We completed an inspection of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) small miner (those with 10 or fewer claims) mining claims. We focused on whether the BLM monitors these claims to ensure that they are legitimate, that maintenance fees are paid, and, if these fees are waived, that the required assessment work is conducted and complies with all applicable laws and regulations. We found that the BLM does ensure that small miner claims are legitimate and that maintenance fees are paid. The BLM does not physically validate the assessment work reported by small miner claimants seeking waivers to the maintenance fee, however. In Colorado and California, the two BLM State offices we inspected, we found that the BLM verifies that small miners requesting a waiver qualify for that waiver. We also found that the BLM verifies that documentation of work performed on mining claims, which is required of those who receive the waiver, is received annually by September 1. Identifying that work has been performed for waived claims, however, is essentially an honor system. We found that many affidavits included a description of assessment work apparently not in compliance with what was listed in regulations as qualifying work. The remoteness of claim locations also make BLM in-person validation of an owner’s onsite maintenance work unlikely. We make two recommendations: one to the BLM that proposes a cost-benefit analysis of the administrative cost and the burden of managing the maintenance fee waiver for small miners, and the second to the Secretary of the Interior that suggests using the BLM’s cost-benefit analysis to determine the future of the program.