July 19, 2018 - A recent report from the Powder River Basin Resource Council shows that of approximately 206 square miles of land occupied by 14 coal mines throughout Wyoming, only about 2.4 percent of that land has been recovered.

Every year the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation Enforcement, a federal agency, puts together oversight reports for states that have coal mining permitting processes.

In those reports, the OSMRE tracks reclamation status. Federal and state laws require coal mines to reclaim mined land while mines are still active in order to ensure the mines have the resources to do so and to limit the amount of land that needs to be reclaimed at any one time.

Stacy Page, a PRBRC member and former Department of Environmental Quality mining regulator, said reclamation is a slow, expensive process that mines need to work on gradually to complete fully.

The PRBRC report shows coal mines are not keeping pace with required reclamation efforts.

Shannon Anderson, an attorney for the PRBRC, said whether coal companies have the resources to reclaim the land they have mined will depend on the strength of the bonds they have secured.

Federal law requires coal companies to secure bonds that will guarantee the costs to restore the land a mine occupies if that mine closes.

“It’s really important for coal mines to put up strong bonds and financial assurances to guarantee reclamation will happen,” Anderson said. “So if the mine becomes unprofitable and the company walks away from that mine, the state isn’t left holding the bag.”

Anderson said the practice of self-bonding, which allows companies to use their own assets to guarantee funds for reclamation, puts the state and taxpayers at risk of having to pay reclamation costs because if a coal company goes bankrupt, those assets will not be accessible.

Self-bonding has been a contentious issue and the PRBRC submitted a petition to end the practice to the Department of Environmental Quality in May.

At that time, Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, said in an interview with The Press his group was open to tightening self-bonding regulations, but the practice provided coal companies crucial flexibility in complying with federal bonding requirements.

In March, the DEQ presented revisions to self-bonding requirements in the state, which were deemed too strict and sent back for revisions. Those revisions are expected to be presented in September.

Page said in many cases mines have partially reclaimed the land they used but do not complete the process. 

“There are actually three categories of bond release and for most of the mines it is very expensive to go for that last step,” Page said. “…So a lot of the mines don’t have a lot of motivation to do that.” 

Mine reclamations are verified in stages and at each stage companies recover a portion of the bond they posted to ensure reclamation.

However, Page said in many cases mines do not finish the third stage and fully recover their bonds. 

Anderson also said the way companies categorize pieces of a mining operation, such as declaring an aspect of the mine a permanent facility, can slow down the rate at which a mine is reclaimed.

“What we’d like to see is a tightening of that definition so there is more reclamation done of the mine overall as early as possible and a lot of it isn’t left until the very end when the mine isn’t making money anymore,” Anderson said.

The report also points out that if mines prioritize reclamation efforts, they can continue to provide jobs to mine workers even as mining activities are winding down. 

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