Ohio Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Plan

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement</SUBAGY> <CFR>30 CFR Part 935</CFR> <DEPDOC>[SATS No. OH-259-FOR; Docket ID: OSM-2017-0002; S1D1S SS08011000 SX064A000 234S180110; S2D2S SS08011000 SX064A000 23XS501520]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Ohio Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Plan</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; approval of amendment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), are approving an amendment to the Ohio Abandoned Mine Land (AML) Reclamation Plan (Ohio Plan or Plan) under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA or the Act). Ohio proposed to amend its existing plan to reflect statutory, regulatory, policy, procedural, and organizational changes made since it was originally approved in 1982. Ohio also submitted relevant statutory provisions amended by the State legislature in 2016, as well as draft statutory revisions regarding what land and water resources are eligible for Federal grant funds and other proposed amendments for consistency with SMCRA, for OSMRE's review and consideration. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective October 30, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Thomas Koptchak, Field Office Director, Pittsburgh Field Office, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Telephone: (814) 421-1438, email: <E T="03">tkoptchak@osmre.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background on the Ohio Plan</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Submission of the Amendment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. OSMRE's Findings</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Summary and Disposition of Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. OSMRE's Decision</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background on the Ohio Program</HD> The AML Reclamation Program was established by Title IV of the Act (30 U.S.C. 1201 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) in response to concerns over extensive environmental damage caused by past coal mining activities. The program is funded, in part, by a reclamation fee collected on each ton of coal that is produced. The money collected is used to finance the reclamation of abandoned coal mines and for other authorized activities. Section 405 of the Act allows States and Tribes to assume exclusive responsibility for reclamation activity within the State or on Tribal lands if they develop, and submit to the Secretary of the Interior for approval, a program (often referred to as a plan) for the reclamation of abandoned coal mines. Section 405 also requires that each State with an abandoned mine reclamation program must have an approved State regulatory program pursuant to section 503 of the Act. On August 10, 1982, the Secretary of the Interior approved the Ohio Plan. You can find background information on the Ohio Plan, including the Secretary's findings, the disposition of comments, and conditions of approval of the Ohio Plan in the August 10, 1982, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (47 FR 34719). You can also find later actions concerning the Ohio Plan and Plan amendments at 30 CFR 935.25. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Submission of the Amendment</HD> By letter dated March 17, 2017 (Administrative Record No. OH-2195-01), and in accordance with 30 CFR 884.15(a), Ohio sent us an amendment to its Plan on its own initiative. By letter dated September 15, 2017 (Administrative Record No. OH-2195-04), Ohio provided a revised amendment to describe the proposed revisions more clearly. By letter dated September 18, 2018 (Administrative Record No. Oh-2195-06), Ohio submitted an updated amendment with a revision to section XI of its Plan. We announced receipt of the proposed amendment in the May 10, 2019, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (84 FR 20599). In the same document, we opened the public comment period and provided an opportunity for a public hearing or meeting on the adequacy of the amendment. We did not hold a public hearing or meeting because no one requested one. The public comment period ended on June 10, 2019. We received a single comment that was not germane to the Plan amendment, and, therefore, we have not provided a response. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. OSMRE's Findings</HD> The following are the findings we made concerning the amendment under SMCRA and the Federal regulations at 30 CFR 884.14 and 884.15. We are approving the amendment as described below. Any revisions that we do not specifically discuss below concerning minor wording or editorial changes can be found in the full text of the Plan amendment available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> OSMRE also notes that we are separately reviewing State reclamation plans to identify any components that may need to be addressed in light of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, more commonly referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) (Pub. L. 117-58). That review is ongoing and not reflected in our decision on Ohio's amendment here. <HD SOURCE="HD2"> Amended Statutory Language   Generally, States do not request that OSMRE accept changes to AML statutes or regulations as amendments to an AML Plan, which is a narrative document that usually is not in the form of a statute or regulation. However, there is no provision in SMCRA or the Federal regulations governing submission and approval of AML Plans and amendments thereto that prohibits a State from including statutes or regulations in conjunction with its AML Plan. Therefore, when we approve a change or proposed change to a statutory provision in this rulemaking, we mean that we are approving that provision as an amendment to the AML Plan. For clarity and ease of reference, we recommend that Ohio submit changes to its AML Plan narrative document that are consistent with these statutory amendments. </FTNT> On December 19, 2016, Ohio's Legislature amended the statutory language at sections 1515.27, 1513.28, 1513.30, 1513.31, 1513.32, and 1513.37 of the Ohio Revised Code (ORC) regarding the process of determining site eligibility for reclamation activities. <E T="03">See</E> 2016 Sub. H.B. No. 471. The updated language eliminated references to the sunsetted Council on Unreclaimed Strip Mined Lands and designated the chief of the Division of Mineral Resource Management (DMRM) as the entity responsible for the prioritization and approval process of proposed projects eligible for the unreclaimed lands funds. This updated language reflects administrative changes made over time to the agency authorized to administer the State's program for regulating surface coal mining and reclamation. The updated statutory language is in accordance with SMCRA and the Federal requirements of 30 CFR subchapter R, which does not proscribe a particular State administrative structure responsible for prioritizing and approving proposed projects. Therefore, we are approving the updated statutory language of the ORC as an amendment to the Ohio Plan. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Draft Statutory Amendments</HD> Ohio's amendment also includes additional draft statutory changes to ORC 1513.37 to clarify and elaborate upon the priority by which land and water resources are eligible to receive Federal grants for reclamation of abandoned mine lands in accordance with the 2006 SMCRA amendments. Ohio's draft statutory language at ORC 1513.37(B) revises several aspects of the priority criteria. The number of priority categories is reduced from six to three. The highest priority categories (Priority 1 and 2) are expanded to include the land and water resources adjacent to a prioritized site and the term “general welfare” has been struck from those priorities. Additionally, Ohio drafted revisions to the specifications of the priority categories to allow lower priority projects (Priority 3) to be initiated before the completion of higher priority projects (Priority 1 or 2), provided that the expenditure is done at eligible AML sites adjacent to higher priority projects (Priority 1 or 2). The SMCRA amendments were signed into law on December 20, 2006, as part of the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006. <E T="03">See</E> Public Law 109-432. The 2006 amendments substantially modified the AML reclamation program in Title IV of SMCRA, including, but not limited to, removing previous priorities 4 and 5 and striking the term “general welfare” as components of priorities 1 and 2. <E T="03">See</E> U.S.C. 1233(a). In addition, the 2006 amendments also permitted the initiation of Priority 3 reclamation projects before completing all Priority 1 and 2 projects if the Priority 3 reclamation is performed in conjunction with a Priority 1 or 2 project. <E T="03">See</E> 30 U.S.C. 1232(g)(7). We note that our guidelines generally direct that reclamation of lower priority projects should not begin until the higher priority projects are at least in the process of being reclaimed. However, consistent with the 2006 amendments and associated changes to the implementing regulations, we also recognize that it can be economically and logistically advantageous to address lower priority problems as part of abating higher priority problems. Allowing a State to reclaim Priority 3 problems ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> spoil ridges) as part of abating Priority 1 or 2 hazards ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> highwalls) leverages its limited funding to get the best reclamation at a lower cost. This approach also generally reclaims more AML problems overall, and in some cases can more effectively abate and reclaim hazards, while reducing the cost of reclaiming the higher and lower priority problems. Ohio offers draft statutory changes at ORC 1513.37(C)(3) regardin ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 36k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━