Mining bill awaits Alaska House concurrence on technical changes

Alaska miners who file their paperwork late will not immediately lose a mining claim, but would pay a penalty for the late filing under a bill that passed the Alaska Senate April 6 and was headed back to the House for concurrence on technical changes.

House Bill 344, sponsored by Rep. Hugh Fate, R-Fairbanks, changes the current law that says if a miner misses the filing deadline for annual rental fees, statements of annual labor and production royalty for a mining claim, the claim is considered abandoned. Both the early March vote in the House and the April 6 vote in the Senate were unanimous.

This bill helps smaller miners, Fate told the Senate Resources Committee March 24, and thanked both the Department of Natural Resources and the Alaska Miners Association for assisting with the bill.

Under current law, a miner who misses the filing deadline is deemed to have abandoned the claim and is required to wait a year before he can re-file on that claim, Fate said. He said he has "actually seen people come in 10 minutes late to the recorder's office," and their claim was, as a result, legally abandoned.

Under HB 344 a miner would still lose his claim if he files late and someone else has top-filed a claim over the same area, or files a claim over the area after the missed filing date and before the original miner rectifies the late paperwork and payments, Fate told the committee. This doesn't alter the law that allows someone else to file on open ground, he said, but addresses a concern of small miners who have lost claims through not being able to get into the recorder's office.

"This provides a much needed option to the existing statutes that will create a benefit to the overall mining industry and primarily to the small miners," Bob Loeffler, director of the Alaska Division of Mining, Land and Water, said in a fiscal note for HB 344.

"It is unfortunate that, despite the best intentions of the miners, inadvertent delays to filing do occur," Loeffler said. "This has resulted in small family operations that have been active for generations sometimes losing their claims and, in some cases, their livelihood."

HB 344 provides that if no other claim has been filed, the miner who missed the filing deadline could retain his claim by filing the necessary paperwork, paying the royalties and rent due, plus a penalty equal to one year's rent.