Make America Beautiful Again EO

[Aperventure]

It was certainly federal land before a lot got there.

But I think where a lot of the ranchers and sheep herders have apt of heartburn is the Federal Lands Policy of 1976, and the Horse and Burro act.

History of the BLM | Bureau of Land Management

Our Heritage, Our Future In many ways, the history of the Bureau of Land Management is the history of the growth and development of the United States. The BLM was formally established in 1946, but its roots go back to the years after America’s independence, when the young nation expanded. At...

www.blm.gov

Ive never heard the mention of locals thinking they have special preference because they live there, compared to other citizens.

The sentiment is very strong that locals can manage the land better.

Whether the locals can do better or not in a larger scale? I dont know. But I do know local and state managed lands we have seem to be managed a lot better than federal lands. Im not sure how that would cross over in scale.

It seems like there must be some examples or large private landowners managing their land. now if we could only get insight into their accounting & labor hours / tasks for it over 10-20-30 years to see what resources they use to manage and its costs / revenues (or lack thereof)… then we wouldn’t be left with the schoolyard argument “my dads got better land management than your dad (the fed govt)”

 

[Aperventure]

I’m on board with the concept of making federal lands pay for their upkeep and maintenance through raising the cost of extraction royalties and fees to a fair market rate. Allowing below market rates for resource extraction that benefits individuals or corporations while offloading the costs of over site and maintenance to the American taxpayer is bad business. Unfortunately, the folks yelling the loudest about how much federal lands cost taxpayers are the same folks who generally oppose raising prices for commercial use.

A couple points of clarification. Admittedly I am biased and to some degree agree there are times resource extraction fees are too low. However, in a great deal of the west, MT and Wyo, in particular lowering royalty rates on Fed land deposits can actually boost revenue to Fed and State governments. Reducing the rate allows me to mine otherwise uneconomical resources. Lower rate but greater overall fee. It’s true and hard to argue that lease rates are anything but a joke. But the real revenue to the Fed is from the royalty and from the bonus bid. This is where the $100’s of millions come from not the lease rates. Additionally, maintenance and monitoring costs are largely borne by the operator not the Feds. We pay for all reclamation, veg and wildlife monitoring, remediation, etc. Administrative costs incurred by the Fed to manage our operation are largely reimbursed by the operator through a cost recovery system. If I want the BLM to review my request for a new lease. They will charge me an estimate fee prior to starting work. If their effort exceeds that cost then we lather, rinse, repeat. If this new lease results in the need for an EIS, they always do, I pay for that work through cost recovery and by hiring the contractor that will perform the work. That contractor technically works for the Feds but the operator pays that $3.0M bill. Reclamation bonding, at least in reference to coal mining, far exceeds the actual cost of reclamation. Example, my mine carries a $100,000,000 bond for reclamation should I go bankrupt. This cost calculation is determined by the State, for the Feds, not by me. My assumed cost to perform this same work is $57,000,000.

Just a couple points to consider when determining how fair or unfair resource extraction costs are.
[/QUOTE]

@WyoCoalMiner
Seems like you know quite a bit about this topic. I’m curious how this reclamation bond paid for by the mine operator functions in reality? we hear so many stories / see images of open pit mines (Berkeley mine, driving through the open pit mine of I-90 near Gillette WY Wyodak I think, or any old iron ore mine in northern MI or MN) or hilltops in West Virginia left barren. Which seems to me as incomplete reclamation. Now I don’t know enough to say what complete reclamation is. So for the bond who decides that? And What exactly is the scope of this reclamation (eg when is reclamation “done”), and who decides when it is done?

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

Seems like you know quite a bit about this topic. I’m curious how this reclamation bond paid for by the mine operator functions in reality? we hear so many stories / see images of open pit mines (Berkeley mine, driving through the open pit mine of I-90 near Gillette WY Wyodak I think, or any old iron ore mine in northern MI or MN) or hilltops in West Virginia left barren. Which seems to me as incomplete reclamation. Now I don’t know enough to say what complete reclamation is. So for the bond who decides that? And What exactly is the scope of this reclamation (eg when is reclamation “done”), and who decides when it is done?

Reclamation bonding largely started after passage of Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA). SMCRA was a direct result of the Berkley Pit, old North Country Iron ore mines, Eastern Coal mines and other mining projects that eventually played out and where left abandoned by the now defunct operator. SMCRA is a Federal Law and oversite is through the Department of Interior by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE). However, most States (might be all States, not certain) have and want Primacy on Administering Fed law. Example EPA sets requirements for air and water quality, but Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality is responsible for making sure those requirements are being met. OSMRE sets the reclamation standards, but WyDEQ does the monitoring, testing and enforcement of these standards. Fed funds get sent back to the State to help support this work. This is the main reason states want Primacy. If the Fed agency can determine that the State is not adequately enforcing Fed standards, it can and will stop the flow of Fed funds.

Each State has slightly different methods for calculating a mines reclamation bond but process is based off the premise "What would it cost the State to hire a third-party contractor to come in and cleanup the disturbance should the operator go bankrupt?". The state sets the guidelines for how the operator calculates their bond, the operator completes a yearly calculation based off current disturbance, completed reclamation, incomplete reclamation and third-party administration costs and submits that to the State. If the state approves, then that is your rec bond for the year. Currently, most operations hold a Surety bond through a third-party as their rec bond. Self-bonding was a thing but is going away in most states, if not all. Self-bonding was allowed if your company was large enough and had a strong enough balance sheet to cover expected rec costs. All it took was several large coal companies going bankrupt in the 2010's to scare the states away from allowing self-bonding. Surety bonds are safer for the State but are getting harder to obtain. When ESG became a thing many of the large financial institutions around the world stopped providing surety bonds to fossil fuel operations. Those that did, required hefty premiums and collateral obligations.

As an operation gets reclamation done a portion of the bond is reduced. The most expensive part of rec is filling the hole and regrading back to PMT or AOC. Once this step is complete about 60% of the bond held for that acre is dropped from the calc. The next step is getting topsoil laid down and seeded. This gets back another 20%. The final but most time-consuming step is making sure vegetation is correct and fully established. In Wyo for instance this requires at a minimum a 10-year demonstration that you have reestablished the correct species in the correct density to achieve the post mine land use requirements. If this can be demonstrated, then you can achieve final bond release and your obligation for that acre is done. At each of these phases, the Fed agency steps in and makes the final determination if standards have been met. However, the state does almost all of the yearly monitoring and administration.

To help pay for past sins in the industry, coal operations pay a fee on every ton mined towards the Abandoned Mine Land (AML) fund. This money is meant to be used by state and Feds to help cleanup old mining projects. AML is technically fully funded, however as with most programs it gets raided by gov officials for projects that aren't really abandoned mine land. Much of the use of these funds is beneficial. Each year Wyoming uses AML funds to pump shotcrete underground to help fill old UG coal mining voids from the early 1900's under Rock Springs.

I suspect the Berkley pit uses AML funds to pay for mitigation efforts. However, I doubt we will ever see that hole filled back in. It's just too big. Wyodak is still in operation. Only reason that pit still exists along I90 is they have not backfilled yet.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know. Hope it helps.