As a city, Washington DC is known for many things. It’s the undisputed center of political power and intrigue. It’s a huge tourist destination, with numerous museums, monuments and great restaurants. Its basketball team constantly gets beaten by the Harlem Globetrotters. And, save for perhaps Boston, it has one of the most absurd street systems in the entire country.

But for all the things that Washington DC is known for, it’s never been known as a mining town. But that might change:

Tucked inside a huge budget bill headed for an upcoming House vote is a provision that could spur the federal government to sell off millions of acres of public land to mining interests, marking a major shift in the nation’s mining policy.

The measure, which would generate an estimated $158 million in revenue over the next five years, would also put on the market key parcels of federal land in the District that had been promised to the city for initiatives such as redevelopment along the Anacostia River.

Hmmm. A measure that would provide a wide path for federal land to be sold off to industry? Who could be behind such a thing?

Oh yeah…that guy:

Congress has barred the government from selling land outright to mining companies since 1994, on the grounds that they should lease public land the same way oil and gas firms do to extract the minerals below. But House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.) said the measure would cut the deficit and promote private ownership. “In some states primarily owned by the federal government, it’s important that more of that land become private property,” Pombo said. “These environmental groups want the federal government to own everything.”

This is about what we should expect from Pombo, who has already called for the Endangered Species Act to be gutted, pushed for national parks to be sold off or covered in advertisements, and (most recently) proposed cutting down trees in national parks as a way to combat high heating costs. To his credit, he’s able to spread the land-grab around; the areas in DC that could go to mining interests include the waterfront site of a new baseball stadium and other land that was meant to support housing and office buildings. But on the bright side, the influx of mining opportunities in the nation’s capital could possibly be spun as a new jobs initiative.

The amount of government-owned land that could be placed on the auction block could range anywhere from 360,000 to 5.7 million acres. And although this legislation is meant to help mining interests in particular, it’s worded loosely enough that no one ever needs to prove that the land has any mineral value at all. This, of course, means that real estate speculators, construction firms and other non-mining concerns are free to get in on the hot, sweaty government-provided action.

“Anybody who want to could go out there and make a claim on public land could just go out and do it, and do other things with the land other than mining,” said Mat Millenbach, the Bureau of Land Management’s former state director in Utah and Montana.

You didn’t think they would actually build a coal mine in DC, did you?