Wyoming Regulatory Program

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement</SUBAGY> <CFR>30 CFR Part 950</CFR> <DEPDOC>[SATS No. WY-049-FOR; Docket No. OSM-2021-0003; S1D1S SS08011000 SX064A000 245S180110; S1D1S SS08011000 SX064A000 24XS501520]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Wyoming Regulatory Program</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 Wyoming regulatory program (hereinafter, the Wyoming Program or Program) under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA or the Act). On its own initiative, the Wyoming Land Quality Division (LQD), in response to State legislative changes enacted in 2020, proposed rules to its Program that facilitate the disposal of inert decommissioned wind turbine blades and towers as backfill in end walls or the final pit voids in surface coal mining operations. In addition, Wyoming has updated Chapter 2 of its Coal Rules, titled “Permit Application Requirements for Surface Coal Mining Operations,” to provide consistency with the Wyoming Secretary of State's Rules on Rules, as well as correct grammatical errors. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective February 12, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Attn: Jeffrey Fleischman, Field Office Director, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 100 East B Street, Casper, Wyoming 82602, Telephone: (307) 261-6550, Email: <E T="03">jfleischman@osmre.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background on the Wyoming Program</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 Wyoming Program</HD> Section 503(a) of the Act permits a State to assume primacy for the regulation of surface coal mining and reclamation operations on non-Federal and non-Indian lands within its borders by demonstrating that its program includes, among other things, State laws and regulations that govern surface coal mining and reclamation operations in accordance with the Act and consistent with the Federal regulations. <E T="03">See</E> 30 U.S.C. 1253(a)(1) and (7). On the basis of these criteria, the Secretary of the Interior conditionally approved the Wyoming program on November 26, 1980. You can find background information on the Wyoming program, including the Secretary's findings, the disposition of comments, and conditions of approval in the November 26, 1980, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (45 FR 78637). You can also find later actions concerning Wyoming's program and program amendments at 30 CFR 950.11, 950.12, 950.15, 950.16, and 950.20. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Submission of the Amendment</HD> By letter dated June 4, 2021 (Administrative Record No. WY-49-01), Wyoming LQD sent us an amendment to its program under SMCRA (30 U.S.C. 1201 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). Wyoming submitted the amendment in response to legislative changes made through Wyoming House Bill HB0129 during the 2020 legislative session, to Wyoming Statute (W.S.) § 35-11-402(a)(xiii). These changes outlined rules regarding how noncoal, non-mining waste, in the form of inert decommissioned wind turbine blades and towers, could be used as backfill in open surface coal mine pits in order to facilitate disposal of those materials. The proposed revisions to Chapter 2 of the Program allow for inert wind turbine blades and towers to be placed in the final pit voids or end walls of surface coal mining operations during reclamation. In addition, Wyoming has proposed grammatical changes to Chapter 2 as well as minor edits to provide consistency with the Wyoming Secretary of State's Rules on Rules. Wyoming stated in its submission that the Wyoming Legislature tasked LDQ with developing rules and regulations about the disposal of noncoal, non-mining-generated solid wastes at surface coal mining and reclamation operations because of the large volume of decommissioned wind turbine blades and towers, a lack of scalable recycling methods to facilitate their disposal, and limited guidance in SMCRA about this type of disposal. Wyoming's submission seeks to address issues associated with the resulting stockpile of decommissioned wind turbine blades and towers as a result of wind energy generation, upgrades, and routine maintenance. We announced receipt of the proposed amendment in the August 4, 2021, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (86 FR 41907). With that announcement, we opened the public comment period and provided an opportunity for a public hearing or meeting on the adequacy of the proposed amendment. We did not hold a public hearing or meeting because none was requested. We did not receive any comments regarding the amendment. The public comment period ended on September 3, 2021. On September 27, 2024, OSMRE sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Land and Emergency Management (EPA) for comment on Wyoming's proposed amendment. On October 24, 2024, EPA responded that it does not see a conflict between Wyoming's proposed revisions and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) as long as the facilities are permitted and subject to Wyoming's Construction and Demolition Landfill Regulations under Chapter 4 of Wyoming's Solid Waste Division Rules, and meet the Federal criteria at 40 CFR 257, Subpart A. To further assist us in making a final determination on Wyoming's submission, by letter dated November 26, 2024, OSMRE sent Wyoming a letter requesting clarification on certain issues (Administrative Record No. WY-049-12; <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> Docket No. OSM-2021-0003-0009). Wyoming responded by letter dated December 3, 2024 (“Clarification Letter”) (Administrative Record No. WY-049-13; <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> Docket No. OSM-2021-0003-0010). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. OSMRE's Findings</HD> We are approving the revisions to Wyoming's State program. We made the following findings about Wyoming's amendment as provided under SMCRA and the Federal regulations at 30 CFR 730.5, 732.15, and 732.17. <HD SOURCE="HD2">1. Discussion of Regulatory Changes Submitted by Wyoming</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">a. WCWR 020-0006-2 Section 1(a); Section 2(a); Section 3 (b)-(d), (f), (j)-(k); Section 4(a); and Section 5(a)—Minor corrections</HD> In these sections, Wyoming proposed grammatical changes to Chapter 2 as well as minor edits to provide consistency with the Wyoming Secretary of State's Rules on Rules. These revisions were non-substantive changes. Therefore, we are approving Wyoming's proposed changes to WCWR 020-0006-2 Section 1(a); Section 2(a); Section 3 (b)-(d), (f), (j)-(k); Section 4(a); and Section 5(a) because they are consistent with SMCRA and no less effective than the Federal regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD3">b. WCWR 020-0006-2 Section 6—Wind Turbine Blades and Towers as Backfill</HD> Wyoming's proposed rule changes WCWR 020-0006-2 Section 6(b)(ii), primarily by adding paragraph (F), which describes what information is required in the reclamation plan where an operator intends to dispose of “inert decommissioned wind turbine blades and towers” as backfill. Neither SMCRA nor the Federal regulations expressly provide for the disposal of noncoal, non-mining solid waste, such as inert decommissioned wind turbine blades and towers, on surface coal mining and reclamation operations as part of reclamation. The lack of Federal counterpart, however, does not automatically determine whether Wyoming's proposed changes to its State program are consistent with SMCRA and no less effective than the Federal regulations. Any material placed in mine pits or otherwise used to reclaim a permitted mine site must comply with SMCRA permitting requirements and performance standards, regardless of whether the material originates within the permit area or whether it is imported from outside the permit area, and the regulatory authority has the authority to establish monitoring and analysis requirements for those materials. <E T="03">See, e.g., Pacific Coal Co.</E> v. <E T="03">OSM,</E> Civ. No. 03-0260Z, (W.D. Wash. Feb. 2, 2004). So, to ensure Wyoming's proposed amendment meets our approval standards, we must conduct a comparison of Wyoming's proposed rules to SMCRA and the Federal regulations. WCWR 020-0006-2 Section 6(b)(ii)(F) has six requirements, which specify: (I) that “only inert base material from decommissioned wind turbine blades and towers” are allowed to be disposed of in the backfill; (II) “[n]acelles and nacelle housings” and “mechanical, electrical, and other materials” are not permitted to be disposed of in the backfill and must be removed before disposal; (III) as described in more detail below, the material disposed of may only be placed in approved locations that meet certain criteria with certain disclosures; (IV) certain placement requirements, including how the material must be placed in the pits and groundwater monitoring; (V) final surface reclamation requirements; and (IV) the operator pay Wyoming, on a quarterly basis, 25 percent of any revenues collected by the operator for disposal of this material. WCWR 020-0006-2 Section 6(b)(ii)(F)(I) and (II) simply describe the types of noncoal, non-mining solid wastes that may be placed in the backfill under this section. As proposed, WCWR 020-0006-2 Section 6(b)(ii)(F)(III) contains six requirements for locations where i ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 48k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━