CASPER — Across the U.S., there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned mineral mines that have left behind pockmarked landscapes, dangerous subterranean cavities and polluted waterways. It’s the result of an industry that went virtually unregulated for over two centuries.
Almost 50 years after the landmark Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), which created a fund to help reclaim abandoned mines, the issue is still far from resolved.
And as sprawl and development increasingly run up against historically rural mining areas, abandonment has become a growing concern.
“There’s not enough money to mitigate every coal mine. There’s no way. There’s just too many mines,” said Don Newton, who oversees the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) program.
The AML program found a booster in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which set aside $11.3 billion for remediation projects across the country and could octuple reclamation resources for some states.
But leaders in Wyoming and elsewhere say federal administrators are keeping the money penned up in a cage of red tape.
“The new requirements … placed on states are going to take their attention away from the important work of mine reclamation,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said last week during a Natural Resources Committee hearing, referring to stipulations requiring states to provide data on economic gains and greenhouse gas emissions. “They may be interesting data points, but they have nothing to do with the mission of the program.”
The funding is administered by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), whose acting director, Glenda Owens, was grilled by senators accusing her office of filibustering on grant applications.
“We put in $11 billion for AML funding, but we only have a 10-year window. And [at this rate], it won’t get done. It won’t even get out the door, and as bad as we need it, it’ll just lay dormant and get reverted back to Treasury,” said Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
Newton testified before the committee and said the relationship between states and the federal government was breaking down over AML issues.
As an example, he cited OSMRE’s unilateral decision to alter the “guidance language” for reclamation grants without including states.
“Altering agreed upon language, without giving their partners the opportunity to review and comment, erodes trust and does not comply with the principles of cooperative federalism,” he said.
Newton also expressed frustration with what his department sees as “burdensome metrics,” which include things like projected economic benefits and greenhouse gas emissions.
“Trying to evaluate how much greenhouse gas emissions are coming off a two-mile long highwall?” he asked rhetorically of the committee.
“I don’t know that anyone could do that, and I don’t really see the value of it because you’re generating data, not closing off the mine.”
In an interview with the Star-Tribune, Newton said, “All of our projects have potential economic benefit because we’re saving somebody’s house, we’re repairing a road or saving a building from collapsing. Our job is to go fix problems, and if we have to be tracking all these additional metrics, then we’re going to be fixing less problems.”
The metrics are related partly to pressure put on OSMRE to show program success, according to those familiar with the issue.
Owens said the protracted vetting is partly meant to ensure federal dollars are not being spent wastefully, and also to preclude litigation in the future.
“One of the requirements of us to administer this program is to ensure that the federal funds we award are getting used for the purpose that they’ve been granted,” Owens said. “It’s not our goal or intent to throw hurdles and obstacles up.”
Another factor in slow processing is the program’s own growth, which appears to be outpacing OSMRE’s administrative capacity. What began as a pilot, the Abandoned Mine Lands Program, a ramification of SMACRA, has evolved and changed in scope. Its reclamation projects have become intertwined with economic revitalization initiatives that implicate the private sector.
This creates additional administrative work for OSMRE, and may slow down the processing of even simple applications.
Wyoming has received BIL funding for a reclamation in Hanna, which repaired a collapsing highway. It is currently seeking another grant to infill a mining cavity beneath I-80 in Rock Springs.
“We’ve been doing this for 40 years. And just because they’re putting more money into it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be working any differently, right? We know how to put the money on the ground; we know how to fix problems,” said Newton.
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