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9 MINERAL DEVELOPMENT The Park Service lacks adequate authority or resources to prevent threats to park waters from past, present and future mining and oil and gas activities, both within and beyond park boundaries. Mining and drilling activities -past, present and future -seriously threaten park water resources, and in many situations, the Park Service lacks ade- quate authority or resources to prevent adverse impacts. The long history of poorly regulated mining activity, particularly in the West, has littered the landscape with abandoned mining sites. Many of these sites are now located within units of the National Park System, or near parks on their water- shed lands. Abandoned mine sites often leach or drain heavy metals, acids and harmful chemicals into surface and ground water, poisoning plant and ani- mal communities. For example, two acres of tailings at an abandoned mine site in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve are currently leaching heavy metals into park waters. This park alone includes more than 400 abandoned mine or oil and gas development sites. Despite the serious threats posed to park waters from abandoned mine sites, the Park Service lacks the resources and authorities necessary to solve pollution prob- lems. First, the Park Service often lacks ade- quate funding to conduct the studies needed to define the scope and seri- ousness of abandoned mine site pollution prob- lems. Furthermore, even where it has data demon- strating impacts to park resources, the Park Service lacks authority to compel federal and state hazardous waste regulators to initi- ate remedial clean-up actions. This problem is com- plicated by the fact that regulatory agencies typically give priority to cleaning up sites that threaten human health. Moreover, remedial action has often been delayed by the difficulty of attributing legal responsi- bility for abandoned mine sites. At Yellowstone National Park, -for example, the abandoned McLaren mine tailings pile drained and leached poisonous chemicals into Soda Butte Creek, which flows into the park, for years before the Environmental Protection Agency initiated action to stabilize the site. Although the EPA is considering new regula- tions to address the problem of abandoned mine sites on federal public lands, no proposed regulations have yet been promulgated. Furthermore, remedies will be difficult to achieve unless regulations are accompa- nied by a commitment of adequate program funding. At present, for example, EPA commits less than one- half of one full time position to investigation of pollu- tion from mining operations in the entire state of Alaska. Existing and potential mining activities within parks, or on their watershed lands, are better con- trolled than abandoned sites, but still present serious threats to park waters. While the filing of new mining claims is prohibited on federal lands in all parks, the i,az_. , ,~.~ ~f f: - l .~ ,,, ~ ~ ~ z, err;., 4F' ~ ~ ~~ 39 Past, present and future mining on the watershed lands of Yellowstone and other national parks threaten to pollute park waters with heavy metals, acids and other damaging chemicals.