Pennsylvania Regulatory Program

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement</SUBAGY> <CFR>30 CFR Part 938</CFR> <DEPDOC>[SATS No. PA-172-FOR; Docket ID: OSM-2020-0001; S1D1S SS08011000 SX064A000 256S180110; S2D2S SS08011000 SX064A000 25XS501520]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania regulatory program under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA or the Act). The amendment proposes to revise the Pennsylvania program to comply with four required amendments and to correct a provision we previously disapproved. The proposed amendment also includes revisions to Pennsylvania's program, including effluent limitations for bituminous underground coal mines, temporary cessation, the definition of Surface Mining Activities, civil penalties, and administrative requirements, as well as other administrative updates and non-substantive corrections. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective July 28, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Thomas J. Koptchak, Field Office Director, Pittsburgh Field Office, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 3 Parkway Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15220; Telephone: (202) 513-7685; Fax: (412) 937-2177; 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 Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania 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 approved State 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 Pennsylvania program on July 30, 1982. You can find background information on the Pennsylvania program, including the Secretary's findings, the disposition of comments, and conditions of approval of the Pennsylvania program in the July 30, 1982, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (47 FR 33050). You can also find later actions concerning the Pennsylvania program and program amendments at 30 CFR 938.11, 938.12, 938.13, 938.15 and 938.16. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Submission of the Amendment</HD> By letter dated March 16, 2020, (Administrative Record No. PA 906.00), Pennsylvania sent us an amendment to its program under SMCRA (30 U.S.C. 1201 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). This proposed amendment addressed four separate required program amendments codified at 30 CFR 938.16(m), (n), (o), and (mmm), and addresses the term “augmented seeding.” In 1983, we disapproved a prior attempted amendment of this term, as reflected in 30 CFR 938.12(d). The submission also includes numerous other revisions to the Pennsylvania program. We announced receipt of the proposed amendment in the December 17, 2020, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (85 FR 81864). 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 receive any public comments related to the amendment, and we did not hold a public hearing or meeting because it was not requested. The public comment period ended January 19, 2021. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. OSMRE's Findings</HD> After reviewing the proposed amendment, SMCRA, and the Federal regulations, including 30 CFR 938.12, 938.16, 730.5, 732.15, and 732.17, we are approving the amendment as described below. Any revisions that we do not specifically discuss below concerning non-substantive wording, editorial changes, or renumbering of citations are approved here without discussion. 1. <E T="03">Required Amendment at 30 CFR 938.16(m) (relating to Special Terms and Conditions for Collateral Bonds)</E> . This required amendment concerns the valuation of collateral bonds. On December 22, 1989, Pennsylvania submitted several proposed amendments that included a proposed restructuring of 25 Pa. Code 86.158. <E T="03">See</E> 56 FR 24687, 24693 (May 31, 1991). At that time, Pennsylvania proposed to add new subsection 25 Pa. Code 86.158(b)(1) to provide a procedure for determining the value of government securities that were pledged as collateral bonds. The corresponding Federal regulations at 30 CFR 800.21(a)(2) contain a similar provision but specify that the regulatory authority “shall” value all collateral at its current market value. We disapproved the proposed Pennsylvania rule because it provided that the regulatory authority “may” determine the current market value of securities for the purpose of establishing the value of securities for bond deposit, which we interpreted to mean that the valuation of securities for bond deposit was optional. We required that Pennsylvania further amend 25 Pa. Code 86.158(b)(1) to mandate that the value of all government securities pledged as collateral bond must be determined using the current market value. <E T="03">See</E> 56 FR at 24693. This was codified at 30 CFR 938.16(m), which required Pennsylvania to amend 25 Pa. Code 86.158(b)(1) or otherwise amend its program by requiring that the value of the government securities pledged as collateral bonds will be determined by the current market value. <E T="03">OSMRE Finding:</E> In response to this required amendment, Pennsylvania has amended 25 Pa. Code 86.158(b)(1) to provide a procedure for determining the value of government securities pledged as collateral bonds and further required that the regulatory authority “will” determine the current market value of securities pledged as collateral bonds for the purpose of establishing the value of the securities for bond deposit, as required by the Federal regulations at 30 CFR 800.21(a)(2). With this change from the use of optional to mandatory language, we find that the amendment to 25 Pa. Code 86.158(b)(1) satisfies the requirements of 30 CFR 800.21(a)(2), is consistent with the Federal regulations, is in accordance with SMCRA, and can be approved. Therefore, the provision in the Federal regulations at 30 CFR 938.16(m), which tells Pennsylvania to amend its rules or program to require the value of all government securities pledged as collateral bond to be determined using the current market value, can be removed and the paragraph reserved. 2. <E T="03">Required Amendment at 30 CFR 938.16(n) (relating to Special Terms and Conditions for Collateral Bonds)</E> . As part of the proposed restructuring of 25 Pa. Code 86.158, Pennsylvania previously proposed to add new subsection 25 Pa. Code 86.158(b)(2), which required the current market value of collateral bonds pledging negotiable securities to be at least equal to the amount of the required bond amount. <E T="03">See</E> 56 FR at 24693. The counterpart Federal regulation at 30 CFR 800.21(e)(1) stipulates that the “estimated bond value of all collateral bonds shall be subject to a margin which is the ratio of bond value to market value, as determined by the regulatory authority.” 30 CFR 800.21(e)(1) also requires that the calculation of the margin take into consideration legal and liquidation fees, as well as value depreciation, marketability, and fluctuations that might affect the net cash available to the regulatory authority to complete reclamation. While similar, the prior proposed version of 25 Pa. Code 86.158(b)(2) did not consider those factors that may affect the overall value of the posted collateral. As a result, the cash value of a security could be reduced to below the bond value. We approved the prior revision, except to the extent that the value of the collateral bond could equal the overall bond value without taking into consideration the effects of depreciation, marketability, and other factors on the amount of cash available from the bond. <E T="03">See</E> 56 FR at 24693. We also required Pennsylvania to further amend its provisions related to valuation of collateral bonds to require that the estimated bond value of all collateral include consideration of the bond value as opposed to the market value, legal and liquidation fees, value depreciation, marketability, and other fluctuations that might affect the net cash available to the regulatory authority in case of forfeiture. This requirement was codified at 30 CFR 938.16(n). <E T="03">OSMRE Finding:</E> The Federal counterpart regulation, 30 CFR 800.21(e)(1), provides that the estimated bond value of all collateral bonds will be subject to a margin which is the ratio of bond value to market value, as determined by the regulatory authority. Moreover, the Federal regulation requires that the calculation of the margin take into consideration legal and liquidation fees, as well as value depreciation, marketability and fluctuation, which may diminish the action amount of cash available to the regulatory authority to complete reclamation. In response to the required amendment, Pennsylvania has amended 25 Pa. Code 86.158(b)(2) to requ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 63k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━