This photograph, courtesy of the Mineral Policy Center, shows mining exploration roads on potential BLM wilderness in Nevada: a spiderweb that riddles the land. Photograph copyright Philip M. Hocker, Mineral Policy Center. THE FACTS: Today, stealing resources from our publicly owned lands -- through mining -- is ridiculously easy. Lands that belong to all Americans are stripped, scarred, polluted and leached with cyanide. Mining companies get gold, silver, copper and other minerals at bargain basement prices. We get stuck with the cleanup costs. Click HERE for links to the environmental destruction wrought by mining. A Legacy of Destruction: According to the Mineral Policy Center, over half a million abandoned mines scar the nation. The Environmental Protection Agency lists 66 of these recklessly abandoned lands as superfund sites. Acid mine drainage, according to the United States Geological Survey, has degraded more than 8,000 streams and left some aquatic habitats "virtually lifeless." A Net Economic Loss: The American taxpayers pay billions in cleanup costs associated with mining on public lands. A 1996 report from the General Accounting Office says that mines have left 50 billion tons of waste: equivalent to 2,400 football fields -- each piled one mile high! These wastes contaminate the air and leak pollutants into our drinking water. Giving Away Publicly Owned Assets: According to Interior Department Records, between 1872 and 1992, U.S. taxpayers gave away $231 billion of mineral from public lands in our western states: Over 315 million ounces of gold. 5.5 billion ounces of silver. 79.5 million tons of copper. 19.2 million tons of lead. 13.9 million tons of zinc. How the Great Giveaway Works: Today, stealing resources from our public lands is ridiculously easy. First, a mining company - or, actually, anyone - stakes a claim by marking the land and registering it with the government. The claimant gets the rights to all the mineral resources on the land. The American taxpayers get nothing. Next, claimants have to prove to the government that they can make a profit on the land. This is easy, as the mineral resources are essentially given away! When the claim is approved, the land can be leased from the government or bought - for $5 an acre! Either way, the minerals are the sole property of the claimant. The government has just sold away the taxpayer's heritage and wealth for almost nothing. But why pay the five dollars an acre? If the land is leased from the federal government, then the company is subject to environmental restrictions. If the land is bought, the federal laws no longer apply. Buying the land, also known as patenting, is often a way for large corporations to obtain minerals at a negligible cost while circumventing laws meant to protect water, land and wildlife. A Few Examples... Turning $10,000 into $10 Billion According to USA Today (February 9, 1999), a Canadian owned company, American Barrick Resources, paid less than $10,000 for just under 2,000 acres of what used to be public land. This piece of Nevada's high desert is estimated to contain $10 billion dollars in gold. Other "mining" land grabs (but where's the mine?). Turning Sand Into Gold A man purchased valuable property near the Oregon Dunes National Park with the purposed intent to "mine" the sand. He then tried to sell the land back to the government for $12 million. Turning Limestone Into Greenbacks In quickly growing suburban Las Vegas, one couple is trying to buy 419 acres of land in order to "mine" limestone. The land, purchased for $2.50 an acre, sits near housing subdivisions worth $46,000 an acre, making the chances of them actually mining slim-to-none. Turning Gravel Into Scratch In 1970, a man staked a claim in Arizona to mine gravel on 61 acres. Ten years later he sold the land for $400,000 and a share in any future profits. It's now worth $41 million. His total investment? One-hundred-fifty-three dollars, less than the price of a room for a night at the luxurious Pointe Hilton at Tapatio Cliffs that now sits on that land.