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Show House Passes Bill To Aid Prospectors Phosphate prospectors will be able to obtain federal leases on their discoveries without opening open-ing them to competitive bidding under a bill which passed the House. Rep. David S. King of Utah, sponsor of the bill, said the bill establishes two-year prospecting permits to protect the prospectors' prospec-tors' claims. "If, within that period, the prospectors can show the Secretary of the Interior that there are valuable phosphate deposits de-posits on their claims, they will be entitled to leases on any or all of the lands covered by their permits," he explained. "In the absence of a permit provision, the government has been able to issue only leases and these have always been awarded through competitive bidding, without regard for the person who made the original discovery. "Often the hard working prospector pros-pector who made the discovery was edged out of it in the bidding," bid-ding," he said. The bill passed the Senate earlier under the sponsorship of Senator Frank E. Moss and it needs only the President's signature sig-nature to become law. |