ABSTRACT
Although many of the Mining Law's provisions are ill-suited to the needs of the modern mining industry, it is the inevitable collision between the Law's free-access principle and modern environmental imperatives that has provoked the most public controversy in the past two decades. To many of those most deeply concerned with protecting the natural environment, and who perhaps neglect too much the contributions of the minerals industry to modern life, "mine" often has the military connotation attributed to it by a prominent mining historian of an earlier era. According to T. A. Rickard, the word "mine" is a cousin to the word "menace," both deriving from a Latin word meaning threat, for the Romans "learned how to demolish a barbarian fortification long before they acquired any technical skill in the art of working ores." 1 To modern environmentalists, and to some inhabitants of quiet mountain towns who do not want to see their way of life perturbed by the often awesome earthmoving machinery, pollution, and attendant effects of modern mining, hardrock mining frequently poses exactly that kind of threat.
