observed, and allowed these three states to ignore enforcement on many violations.

Though operators would promise to correct violations of the law, there was no pressure to do so. Many illegal practices persisted for months without corrective action, leading to erosion, water pollution, and loss of topsoil. Many of these practices continue, because OSM has been slow to change its ways.

OSM's trail of broken promises stretches across the West, across the pits, the spoil piles, the eroding hillsides, the disappearing streams. The trail is rutted by OSM's consistent pattern of proposing weakened rules to undermine the intent of Congress. What we want is not impossible perfection. We want OSM and the states to do complete and meaningful cumulative hydrologic impact assessments, as SMCRA requires. We want these agencies to require permit applicants to do adequate analyses of the probable hydrologic consequences of mining, not only for the life of the mine, but throughout the bonding period. We want them to include steps to minimize hydrologic disturbances, as SMCRA requires. If an applicant cannot restore or replace water resources disturbed by mining, then the agencies must deny the permit application, as SMCRA requires. We want standardized data collection formats and formulas for calculating hydrologic impacts in mine permit applications, as OTA has recommended.

We want the burden of proving that western lands will be restored after mining placed directly on permit applicants, as SMCRA requires.

Coal mining companies and regulatory agencies

must live up to the terms of the law: no only in the permitting process, but also in the follow-up actions required during the mine life and bonding period. The agencies must not approve requests for permit revisions which weaken requirements.

reclamation

The burden of collecting adequate information to evaluate unsuitability petitions must fall on the regulatory agencies, as SMCRA provides, not on petitioning citizens.

OSM must make the

We want enforcement, not appeasement. irresponsible operators meet the minimum national standards and keep illegal operators from getting new permits. OSM must make the states do their jobs in mine permitting and inspection.

And

OSM and the state regulatory agencies must issue regulations that comply with the spirit and letter of the law.

RECLAMATION AND WATER ISSUES TEN YEARS AFTER THE PASSAGE OF THE

SURFACE MINING CONTROL AND RECLAMATION ACT OF 1977

STATEMENT BEFORE THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS, AUGUST 3, 1987

Prepared by

Wm. Paul Robinson

Southwest Research and Information Center

P. O. Box 4524

Albuquerque, NM 87106

505-262-1862

My name is Wm. Paul Robinson. I am Research Director at Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico and teach in the Community and Regional Planning Program at the University of New Mexico.

In April 1987, I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by a New Mexico mining executive to Navajo people living near a potential coal mine on the reservation. After the executive remarked that the mined land would be returned to preexisting use ten years after the mining was completed, he was asked if he knew of any examples of land in the area which had been returned to preexisting use ten years after mining. He said he wasn't aware of any. This story could have been told in the mid-1970s, but the fact that it still holds true today is testimony to the work left to do to insure that surface mining is adequately controlled and stripmined land is reclaimed in this nation.

The mine being discussed would provide fuel for a new power plant (the Dineh Station) and is in the San Juan Basin on land selected by the Navajo Nation to relocate its residents from the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area. The mine is in one of the most arid parts of the U.S. The inability of the mining community to successfully demonstrate reclamation, most particularly in the arid west, while companies still seek and obtain mine permits is one of the greatest failures of the Act. Federal and State enforcement has been ineffective in requiring miners to make a real on the ground demonstration to comply with the Act's mandate that the permit application include "the degree of detail necessary to demonstrate that reclamation ... can be accomplished..." (Section 508(a)). Authorities granting permits have often failed to rescind or revise

mine permits when inadequate reclamation activities occur, resulting in long term land and water quality degradation.

The Act needs to be improved to insure a valid demonstration of reclamation over a reasonable period of time as a criteria for permit approval. Over the past ten years, the permitting of mines in the arid west without such a showing has meant that coalfield residents have served as guinea pigs for the experiments of the mining community. The government has also done a poor job of informing the public and the states on reclamation performance. The Geological Survey Circular 872 "Reclamation of Mined Lands in the Western Coal Region," was badly out of date when published in 1983 largely because it was based on 1978 observations. The public and the states sorely need a full assessment of reclamation performance since the passage of the Act to serve as an authoritative basis for determining how the Act can be improved to insure reclamation of mined land.

Water, whether ground or surface water, is a key limiting resource not only in the arid west, but throughout the country. Current prominent concerns about toxics in surface and ground water, as well as water resource conservation, had not been well recognized at the time of the passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1976 (SMCRA). Similarly, the difficulty of adequately restoring the hydrologic properties of mined lands was poorly understood. As the Act is now ten years old, it seems neccesary to assess whether more attention is needed to issues such as water, which were not a major focus when the Act was passed.