WASHINGTON — Durable yet outdated, the little-changed 1872 Mining Law crafted to help pick-and-shovel prospectors open up the West may get a serious look next year in Congress.

The Bush administration wants a bigger role for states in enforcement, inspections and managing permits, while some members of Congress want stronger environmental controls.

But virtually everyone is coming to the view that the government should start collecting millions in royalties on gold, silver, copper, uranium and other valuable minerals extracted from federal lands.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton wrote lawmakers who oversee natural resources that she hoped Congress could "resolve long-standing and contentious issues" in its 2002 session.

"The existing framework ... has served the nation well," Norton said. Updating it would "further protect taxpayers and help us achieve more effective administration of the mining program."

Environmentalists disagree, blaming the lack of safeguards in the law for widespread contamination. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 40 percent of Western watersheds have been polluted by mining.

The critics cite as an example bankrupt and abandoned gold mines leaking acid and heavy metals into streams from Alaska to Southern California. A half-million closed mines dot the landscape nationally, with cleanup costs estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.

"The West is settled. Now, we need some protection for the people who settled there," said Lexi Shultz, legislative director of the Mineral Policy Center.

The conservation group filed a suit last month challenging Norton’s revisions of environmental restrictions on hard-rock minerals imposed by President Clinton just before he left office. Norton’s revisions are due to take effect Dec. 31.

More than one-third of the western United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, is government land and most of it is available for mining. But the mining law’s biggest impact is in a minerals-rich region centered in Nevada that extends from Salt Lake City to Sacramento.

While eliminating the government’s authority to tell miners they can’t dig on public land where they’ve staked claims, Norton affirmed a Clinton administration requirement that mining companies post bonds to cover 100 percent of their cleanup costs in case they go bankrupt.

The last time Congress tried seriously to overhaul the 1872 Mining Law was in 1994, just before Democrats lost control of both the House and the Senate. The legislation failed over mining industry concerns.

West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, the senior Democrat on the House Resources Committee, said he was encouraged by Norton’s latest call to action.

"Ironic she’s doing it at the same time she’s gutting Clinton administration regs," said Rahall, who has been waging a 15-year campaign to rewrite the mining law. "But those are on the environment. I will definitely insist that her fiscal concerns be followed through on and coupled with environmental reforms."

The fiscal changes that both Norton and the industry want include making permanent the existing annual claim fees of $100 per year for each 20 acres, whether or not a mine is in operation.

Norton also said Congress should look at imposing royalties for the first time on hard-rock mining. An anathema to the industry and Western lawmakers in the past, a royalty of some kind is now recognized as virtually inevitable.

"We believe it’s fair to pay one, but we also believe it should be balanced," said Jack N. Gerard, president of the National Mining Association.

Gerard’s group said it can live with a 5 percent net royalty based on sales revenues minus production costs. Congressional Budget Office estimates put hard-rock mineral sales from federal lands at $650 million a year, with net proceeds of $97.5 million. That would mean about $5 million a year in royalty payments.

Democrats are pushing for a gross royalty of 8 percent on the wholesale price of the minerals extracted, the same royalty paid on some coal from federal lands.

That would produce royalties totaling $52 million a year.

Oil and gas and other coal companies pay gross royalties of 12.5 percent.