Kentucky Regulatory Program

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement</SUBAGY> <CFR>30 CFR Part 917</CFR> <DEPDOC>[SATS No. KY-267-FOR; Docket ID: OSM-2025-0023; S1D1S SS08011000 SX064A000 256S180110; S2D2S SS08011000 SX064A000 25XS501520]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Kentucky Regulatory Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; public comment period and opportunity for public hearing on proposed amendment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), announce receipt of a proposed amendment to the Kentucky regulatory program (Kentucky program) under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA or the Act). Through this program amendment, Kentucky seeks to amend its law to add a statutory definition for “long-term treatment” and to specify how the additional bonds for long-term treatment are to be calculated. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept written comments on this amendment until 4:00 p.m., eastern time, on December 17, 2025. If requested, we may hold a public hearing or meeting on the amendment on December 12, 2025. We will accept requests to speak at a hearing until 4:00 p.m., eastern time, on December 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by SATS No. KY-267-FOR, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Mail/Hand Delivery:</E> Mr. Justin Adams, Acting Field Office Director, Lexington Field Office, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 2675 Regency Road, Lexington, KY 40503. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (859) 260-8410. • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> The amendment has been assigned Docket ID OSM-2025-0023. If you would like to submit comments, go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and docket number for this rulemaking. For detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Public Comment Procedures” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to review copies of the Kentucky program, this amendment, a listing of any scheduled public hearings or meetings, and all written comments received in response to this document, you must go to the address listed below during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays: OSMRE's Lexington Field Office: Mr. Justin Adams, Acting Field Office Director, Lexington Field Office, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 2675 Regency Road, Lexington, KY 40503, telephone: (304) 977-7177, email: <E T="03">jadams@osmre.gov.</E> The full text of the program amendment is available for you to read at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> You may receive one free copy of the amendment by contacting Mr. Adams at the above contact information. In addition, you may review a copy of the amendment during regular business hours at the following location: Ms. Dawn Baase, Regulation Coordinator, Department for Natural Resources, Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, 300 Sower Boulevard, Frankfort, KY 40601, telephone: (502) 782-6311, email: <E T="03">dawn.baase@ky.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mr. Justin Adams, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 2675 Regency Road, Lexington, KY 40503. Telephone: (304) 977-7177; email: <E T="03">jadams@osmre.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background on the Kentucky Program</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Description of the Proposed Amendment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Public Comment Procedures</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Statutory and Executive Orders Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background on the Kentucky 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 Kentucky program effective May 18, 1982. You can find background information on the Kentucky program, including the Secretary's findings, the disposition of comments, and conditions of approval of the Kentucky program in the May 18, 1982, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (47 FR 21434). You can also find later actions concerning the Kentucky program and program amendments at 30 CFR 917.11, 917.12, 917.13, 917.15, 917.16, and 917.17. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Description of the Proposed Amendment</HD> By letter dated June 5, 2025, (Administrative Record No. KY-2010-01), Kentucky sent us an amendment to its program under SMCRA (30 U.S.C. 1201 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). This submission proposes to define “long-term treatment.” We did not approve Kentucky's prior attempt to define “long-term treatment” in our decision associated with KY-262 on September 21, 2023 (88 FR 65125). With this submission, the Kentucky Department for Natural Resources proposes to amend its regulatory program reflecting statutory changes made by the Kentucky General Assembly. Under this proposed program amendment (KY-267), Kentucky seeks to add a definition for “long-term treatment” to Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS) 350.10(27) and to amend KRS 350.060 to specify how the additional bonds for long-term treatment are calculated. These statutory changes were passed by the Kentucky General Assembly during the 2025 legislative session in Senate Bill 89 and found in the 2025 Regular Session Acts of the Kentucky General Assembly at chapter 119 (2025 KY. Acts ch. 119, sec. 3 and 4). The full text of the program amendment is available for you to read at the locations listed above under <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> and at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Public Comment Procedures</HD> Under the provisions of 30 CFR 732.17(h), we are seeking your comments on whether the amendment satisfies the applicable program approval criteria of 30 CFR 732.15. If we approve the amendment, it will become part of the State program. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Electronic or Written Comments</HD> If you submit written or electronic comments on the proposed rule during the 30-day comment period, they should be specific, confined to issues pertinent to the proposed regulations, and explain the reason for any recommended changes. We appreciate any and all comments, but those most useful and likely to influence decisions on the final regulations will be those that either involve personal experience or include citations to and analyses of SMCRA, its legislative history, its implementing regulations, case law, other pertinent State or Federal laws or regulations, technical literature, or other relevant publications. We cannot ensure that comments received after the close of the comment period (see <E T="02">DATES</E> ) or sent to an address other than those listed (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ) will be included in this proposed rule's docket and considered. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Public Availability of Comments</HD> Before including your address, phone number, email address, or other personal identifying information in your comment, you should be aware that your entire comment, including your personal identifying information, may be made publicly available at any time. While you can ask us in your comment to withhold your personal identifying information from public review, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Public Hearing and Meeting</HD> If you wish to speak at a public hearing, contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> by 4:00 p.m., eastern time, on December 2, 2025. If you are disabled and need reasonable accommodations to attend a public hearing, contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . We will arrange the location and time of the hearing with those persons requesting the hearing. If no one requests an opportunity to speak, we will not hold a hearing. To assist the transcriber and ensure an accurate record, we request, if possible, that each person who speaks at the public hearing provide us with a written copy of his or her comments. The public hearing will continue on the specified date until everyone scheduled to speak has been given an opportunity to be heard. If you are in the audience and have not been scheduled to speak and wish to do so, you will be allowed to speak after those who have been scheduled. We will end the hearing after everyone scheduled to speak and others present in the audience who wish to speak, have been heard. If only one person requests an opportunity to speak, we may hold a public meeting rather than a public hearing. If you wish to meet with us to discuss the amendment, please request a meeting by contacting the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . Any meeting is open to the public and, if possible, we will post notices of meetings at the locations listed under <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . We will make a written summary of each meeting a part of the administrative record. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Statutory and Executive Order Review ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 12k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━