NPCA submitted the following position to members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce ahead of a markup scheduled for December 10, 2025.
H.R. 6373 would undo longstanding protections under the Clean Air Act and threaten the health of America’s national parks. It creates loopholes that will, at a minimum, exempt new mining, smelting, semiconductor fabrication plants and other large stationary sources from vital pollution control requirements. National parks and communities cannot afford weakened clean air protections for mining. According to NPCA’s Polluted Parks 2024 analysis, 97% of national parks suffer from significant or unsatisfactory levels of harm from air pollution. This same air pollution causes illnesses, drives up healthcare costs and has harmful and disproportionate consequences on families that live closest to the pollution sources and face chronic environmental injustices.
The exemptions provided in this bill would increase emissions of dangerous soot (PM2.5), smog and haze-forming pollutants that diminish air quality in national parks, affecting staff and visitors, ecosystem health and the health of nearby communities. Under current law, when a new or modified major source seeks to come online in a nonattainment area, it must secure offsets so that overall air quality continues to improve rather than degrade. This bill would remove this offset safeguard, potentially making pollution worse in areas with already dangerous levels of air pollution. Dirtier air will directly affect the health of our national parks by degrading visitor experiences with hazy skies and threatening people’s health while exercising and playing outdoors.
For example, residents of Fairbanks, Alaska, and visitors and park staff at Denali National Park are already dealing with air pollution problems from mining and other sources. Due to the prevalence of highly polluting woodburning stoves and outdated coal-fired power plants, Fairbanks has some of the highest recorded levels of PM2.5 in the nation and has been in nonattainment since 2009. The PM2.5 emissions from historic mining projects and several proposed mines within the Fairbanks-North Star Borough will only further deteriorate air quality in surrounding areas. Providing an exemption for the mining industry to further evade consideration of harmful air emissions will leave pollution unchecked. The result will deprive people and public lands of badly needed clean air protections.
Under the 1872 Mining Law, local communities across the West have virtually no say in whether a mine can open on public lands near where they live, work and recreate. Because this outdated law lacks meaningful environmental safeguards, statutes like the Clean Air Act are essential tools for ensuring that mining projects do not impose harmful and unforeseen impacts on neighboring communities.
NPCA believes that strong clean air protections must remain at the core of a national critical mineral strategy. These protections ensure that new projects benefit local communities, protect health and our natural wonders, and build durable public support while enabling the United States to compete on innovation, efficiency and sustainability, not on pollution.
