Location, Recording, and Maintenance of Mining Claims or Sites

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is promulgating this rule to amend regulations on locating, recording, and maintaining mining claims or sites. In this rule, BLM amends the regulations to respond to a recent law that continues to require claimants to pay location and maintenance fees on unpatented mining claims or sites and to provide annual maintenance fee waivers to small miners until September 30, 2001. BLM collected these fees and provided for waivers under the existing regulations based on a previous law that expired on September 30, 1998. The new law-- Moves the annual payment and waiver filing deadline from August 31 to September 1 to coincide with the beginning of the assessment year; Allows time to cure a small miner waiver application defect; and Allows maintenance fee payment after the payment deadline instead of forfeiting a claim or site in an incurable waiver. The interim final rule is necessary to implement and publicize the changes made by Congress. Elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register appears a proposed rule that makes these changes and also reorganizes and simplifies the regulations on locating and maintaining mining claims and sites.