Required Fees for Mining Claims or Sites

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Bureau of Land Management</SUBAGY> <CFR>43 CFR Part 3830</CFR> <DEPDOC>[BLM_HQ_FRN_MO4500178302]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1004-AE98</RIN> <SUBJECT>Required Fees for Mining Claims or Sites</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Land Management, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is issuing this final rule to make statutorily required adjustments to its location and maintenance fees for unpatented mining claims, mill sites, and tunnel sites. These adjustments reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The final rule is effective July 1, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Mail:</E> Director, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1849 C St. NW, Washington, DC 20240, Attention: “RIN 1004-AE98”. <E T="03">Personal or messenger delivery:</E> U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, 1849 C St. NW, Washington, DC 20240, Attention: Regulatory Affairs. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> John Grasso at (303) 239-3777 in the Solid Minerals Group as to program matters or the substance of the final rule, or Stephen Pollard in the Division of Regulatory Affairs at (202) 993-2596 for information relating to the rulemaking process generally. Persons who use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) may call the Federal Information Relay Service (FIRS) at 1-800-877-8339, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to contact the above individuals. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Discussion of the Administrative Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Procedural Matters</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Mining Law of 1872 allows individuals and corporations to stake (or “locate”) mining claims on certain Federal land. Originally, annual assessment work and related filings were required by statute in order to maintain an unpatented mining claim or site. 30 U.S.C. 28-28e; 43 U.S.C. 1744(a) and (c). Beginning in fiscal year 1993, mining claimants have been required to pay an annual fee in lieu of performing annual assessment work and making annual filings. Mining claimants locating new claims or sites must pay an initial “maintenance” fee for the assessment year in which the mining claim was located and also pay a one-time location fee. <E T="03">See</E> 30 U.S.C. 28f-28l. This rule implements 30 U.S.C. 28j(c), which requires adjustments to the location and maintenance fees “to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the Department of Labor every 5 years after August 10, 1993, or more frequently if the Secretary determines an adjustment to be reasonable.” Section 28j(c) also requires that mining claimants be provided “notice of any adjustment made under this subsection not later than July 1 of any year in which the adjustment is made” and that any fee adjustment “shall begin to apply the first assessment year which begins after adjustment is made.” As enacted in 1993, the one-time location fee was $25, and the annual maintenance fee was $100 per mining claim or site. In 2004, the BLM increased the amount of the location and maintenance fees to $30 and $125 respectively, based on the change in the CPI from September 1, 1993, to December 31, 2003 (69 FR 40294 (July 1, 2004)). In 2009, the BLM increased the amount of the location and maintenance fees to $34 and $140, respectively, based on the change in the CPI from December 31, 2003, to December 31, 2008 (74 FR 30959). On July 27, 2012, the BLM issued a rule (77 FR 44155) that also amended 43 CFR 3830.21, based on a law that changed the way the maintenance fee is calculated for unpatented placer mining claims. Then in 2014, the BLM increased the amount of the location fee to $37 and increased the maintenance fee to $155 for lode mining claims or sites and $155 for each 20 acres or portion thereof for placer mining claims, based on the change in the CPI from December 31, 2008, to December 31, 2013 (79 FR 36662). In 2019, the BLM increased the amount of the location fee to $40 and increased the maintenance fee to $165 for lode mining claims or sites and $165 for each 20 acres or portion thereof for placer mining claims, based on the change in the CPI from December 31, 2014, to December 31, 2019 (84 FR 31219). The adjustments made in this rule are based upon the change in the CPI from December 31, 2018, to December 31, 2023, as reported by the BLS in the “CPI Databases” ( <E T="03">https://www.bls.gov/cpi/data.htm</E> ). The particular series used for this update is the “All Urban Consumers (Current Series) (Consumer Price Index—CPI-U).” The calculated change is 22.1 percent from December 31, 2018, through December 31, 2023. A calculated value for the fees was obtained by inflating the location and maintenance fees established in the 2019 rulemaking by 22.1 percent. The new location fee is $49, and the new maintenance fee is $200 per lode mining claim or site and $200 for each 20 acres or portion thereof for placer mining claims. The new location fee is based on rounding the calculated value to the nearest $1. The maintenance fee is based on rounding the calculated value to the nearest $5. Mining claimants must pay the new location fee and maintenance fee for any mining claim or site located on or after September 1, 2024. Mining claimants must pay the new maintenance fee to maintain existing mining claims and sites beginning with the 2025 maintenance year. The maintenance fee is due on or before September 1, 2024. Under 43 CFR 3834.23(d), mining claimants who have already submitted maintenance fees for the 2025 assessment year, and those who timely pay the 2025 assessment year maintenance fee based on the fee in effect immediately before the adjustment was made, will be given an opportunity to pay the additional amount without penalty upon notice from the BLM. The BLM will also give claimants the opportunity to cure deficient maintenance and location fee payments for new claims or sites located on or after September 1, 2024, and timely received on or before December 31, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion of the Administrative Final Rule</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Why the Rule Is Being Published on a Final Basis</HD> The BLM is adopting this final rule solely to adjust the location and maintenance fee amounts in § 3830.21. The BLM for good cause finds under 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(3)(B) that notice and an opportunity for public comment for this rule are unnecessary and that this rule may properly take effect upon publication. The reason is that this rule implements a statutory requirement to adjust the location and annual maintenance fees at least every 5 years, and the last adjustment was made in 2019. The statute specifies the method of calculating the fee adjustments and prescribes the form and manner of notice of the fee adjustment, and the BLM has no discretion in implementing the statute. The BLM also determines under 5 U.S.C. 553(d) that there is good cause to place the rule into effect on the date of publication, because the adjustments made in the rule are explicitly authorized by statute. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Organization of the Final Rule</HD> This final rule contains only the specific amendments necessary to conform to the requirements of the statute. The amendments appear as modifications of the fee transaction table at 43 CFR 3830.21 to change the amount of the location and annual maintenance fees required to be paid for each lode mining claim, mill site, or tunnel site and for each 20 acres or portion thereof for a placer mining claim. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Procedural Matters</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review </HD> Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Order 14094, provides that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) will review all significant rules. This rule is not significant and OIRA will not formally review it because it does not meet one or more of the criteria for significance as follows: (a) This rule will not have an effect of $200 million or more on the economy. It will not adversely affect in a material way the economy, productivity, competition, jobs, the environment, public health or safety, or State, local, or tribal governments or communities. The rule increases the maintenance and location fees as provided for by statute. We estimate that the rule will likely result in a small increase in transfer payments from mining claimants to the Federal Government. The fee adjustment does not change the substance of current mining claim administration within the BLM. The total amount of fees to be collected, including the effects of the adjustment, is estimated to be $124 million annually, of which approximately $22.2 million will be attributable to the adjustments made in this rule. (b) This rule will not create an inconsistency or otherwise interfere with an action taken or planned by another agency. The rule affects only the BLM's administration of its minerals program and does not change the relationships of the BLM to other agencies and their actions. (c) This rule does not change the budgetary effects of entitlements, grants, user fees, or loan programs or the rights or obligations of their recipients. (d) This rule does not raise novel legal or policy issues. It merely updates the maintenance and location fees that BLM assesses. Executive Order 13563 reaffirms the principles of Executive Order 12866 while calling for improvements in the nation's regulatory system to promote ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━