A federal GAO report released Thursday reported a 2010 federal review of the Department of Environmental Protection’s coal mining reclamation bonding program found it did not result in requiring enough bonding from current mining companies to guarantee their sites could be reclaimed if the operator walked away.
The report said the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and DEP agreed on a plan to correct those problems in 2014 and by October of 2017 DEP reported all but two active mining companies complied with requests to post additional bonds to more adequately cover reclamation of their sites.
The weakness identified in DEP’s program was the fact the agency had not been calculating how much bonding was needed based on the actual size of the areas excavated for mining. That has since been corrected.
Pennsylvania holds the third highest total of mining reclamation financial assurance in the nation, behind Wyoming and Texas, but is second in the amount of surety bonds.
The primary recommendation of the report was to eliminate the self-bonding option for coal mining companies because of the difficulties mining states and the federal government have in assuring funds will be there if reclamation must be done.
Pennsylvania does not allow mining companies to self-bond for land reclamation, based on the experience the Commonwealth has had with several cycles of boom and bust for the coal mining industry.
Click Here for a copy of the report.
[Note: Congress is still considering whether or not to permanently fund abandoned mine reclamation/ economic development projects under the RECLAIM initiative.
[Congress must also reauthorize the federal Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program per ton fee that provides the funding for abandoned mine reclamation projects. The fee is due to expire in 2021.]
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