The Trump administration order, which was ostensibly about windmills, was amended when certain items were brought to the Interior Department’s attention. (Photo: Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercurty)
One of the nearly three dozen executive orders issued by President Donald Trump on the day of his inauguration last month is designed to halt the development of wind turbines.
On Trump’s behalf and as part of carrying out that order, the Department of Interior’s acting secretary issued an order the same day to all Interior’s bureaus and departments temporarily suspending their authority “to take any of the following actions…”
One of the paused actions listed in the order was approving any “plans of operation, or to amend existing plans of operation under the General Mining Law of 1872.”
The 1872 mining law governs so-called hardrock minerals. Every gold, copper, and silver mine in Nevada is operating under that law. And of increasing significance in recent years, permitting of lithium mines also falls under the 1872 mining law.
The Nevada office of the Bureau of Land Management office is the lead agency tasked with approving mining plans or amendments to those plans in the state. Nevada Current asked the Nevada BLM office in an email on January 27 if the office was aware of any pending mining plans, or amendments to existing plans of operation, which might be halted by the Trump administration’s inauguration day order.
The Nevada office was also asked if it had insight into why the 1872 law was included in the order.
Three days later, on Jan. 30, the press secretary in BLM’s Washington D.C headquarters responded to say the mining reference in the order had been removed, “So we do not anticipate any projects will be impacted by the order.”
The press secretary’s email did not address the question asking why the 1872 law was referenced in the order in the first place.
The Interior Department’s list of recent orders from the secretary showed that on Jan. 29, the day before the email from BLM’s Washington headquarters, an amended version of the order was published, and reference to projects subject to the 1872 law had indeed been eliminated.
Nevada Republican Rep. Mark Amodei is a staunch advocate of Nevada’s mining industry. Asked this week if the congressman was aware that a pause on mine permitting procedures had been included in the original memo, and if so did he play a role in getting mining activity removed from the order, a spokesperson in his office replied, “We were not involved in this EO.”
Asked the same questions, the office of Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, an equally staunch ally of the mining industry, did not respond.
Mining wasn’t the only incongruous inclusion in an order ostensibly about windmills.
The original order also put a pause on federal land sales, transactions that Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo has repeatedly held out as the most crucial prerequisite to developing more affordable housing in Nevada.
The land sales provision was also removed from the January 29 amended version of the order.
Lombardo’s office did not respond to a request for comment.