Well, right now there is a "moratorium" on patenting land, unless it was already in the pipeline. (its an excuse, but I'll explain that later).
Here is the deal with patents. First - unlike the environmentalists want you to believe - you don't get it for $2.50 an acre.
First, you have a discovery on public land - now this only pertains to locatable minerals (not sands, gravels, oil, etc).
Then, you develop that discovery. This entails testing, gridding, figuring out how much land, how much in minerals etc. Before that, you file a
claim - then you have to file (and pay for) a plan of operations, and do those operations. Of course, eventually that includes bonds and all that
reclamation things that you have to go through.
If the claim is monetarily viable - and that costs quite a bit of money - you can apply for a patent. What that means is that, if you put more thousands of dollars into it, that you have exclusive use of the land - not just the minerals. You can only patent 2 parts of your claim - the part that is actually mineralized, and an area for processing - which must NOT have minerals on it.
Once you apply for a patent, which you pay hundreds for - just for the application piece of paper - then you pay them more money for them to read the application after you have filled it out and mailed it back. Then you have to have a mineral survey. You get a choice of people, from
their list of people who they will accept. Then you pay the surveyor thousands and thousands, because the mineral surveyor has to go over every single square foot of your claim. Then you pay the surveyor to present that to the government. Then the government charges you to look at
your surveyors form. Then the government sends out their own surveyor - after you have paid them thousands and thousands of dollars more.
Oh - I forgot, you also have to hire a professional mining engineer to write up a proposal that tells them all the ways that the claim could be mined, how much it will cost to do each, which one they recommend, and then you need to have a "feasibility study" done. (more money). Then
you have to secure a bond (yes, another one-before you get the patent), that says they will cover your butt if something else goes wrong. Then
you have to have a financial advisor (more money), write up business proposals, as to how you are going to make money at this enterprise.
Then you have to have a reclamation expert come out, write up a proposal as to how and where you will put new ore, processing ore, equipment
placement, settling pond design (oh, yes, you also have to hire a settling pond expert) - should I continue?
If you get through all this (the reason why it costs millions before you even get the application completed) - you finally get to send all this to
the government - oh, I forgot the lawyer - you will need a lawyer. If all of this is approved, the government gives you a mineral patent. The land and the minerals are yours, forever and ever, just like your house or any other private property. Of course, I should mention that anything in
your claim that is not mineralized enough to be mined economically is taken out (except for a mill area). And THEN you get to pay the $2.50
an acre on what they approve (actually, they have raised that up).
That is just a simple explanation, with several steps missing. It takes, on a good application, 5-10 years, and lots of money.
Now - the moratorium - the moratorium came about when some environmentalist groups thought the government was just "giving away land" for a couple bucks an acre. The moratorium says that public money may not be used to process patents. It doesn't say you cannot patent land,
it just says that public money may not be used. Which is a crock.
We applied for a patent - the government took our $3,000 for sending us the application (and kept it, by the way), and then, when we had done
the first stage of the permit process (more money out of our pocket), we mailed it to the BLM. In the interim, the moratorium was put in. So, since we had a partner who had deep pockets, we got a lawyer and we agreed to paying for everything ourselves, out of pocket, no matter what
the cost was. No public funds. All the legal stuff was sent to them, along with the next check for almost $10,000.00. (we have a very good claim). The BLM sent it back, along with a letter that said we could not pay for the expenses out of pocket, due to the moratorium.
Hmmmmmmm - an oxymoron - no?
Needless to say, I have a very good reason for losing sleep when people talk about the government and treasure sites and mineralized land.
They also tried, unsuccessfully, to vacate our claim, telling us it was invalid. That court battle we won, since we had already spent alot of money
having it gridded out and drilled - and, when we sent our plan of operations to them, they were in the middle of a "flux" (the flux being the
California Desert Protection Act) and they didn't respond within 30 days - and the law says that if they don't give you a "no" within 30 days, then
it is "yes". So, we still have an open-ended plan of operations that they cannot do anything about, as long as we keep doing our part.
Beth
