OFFICE OF SURFACE MINING RECLAMATION & ENFORCEMENT

For Release April 12,  1991                   
Alan Cole (202)  208-2719

NEW OUT-OF-COURT AGREEMENT ENDS "TWO ACRE" SURFACE MINE 
CONTROVERSY

Harry M. Snyder, Director of the Interior Department's Office of
Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement (OSM), today said he has
signed a formal agreement ending 10 years of controversy and
litigation over the surface mining law's much-abused "two-acre
exemption," which was repealed in 1987.

Snyder said the agreement is with Save Our Cumberland Mountains, 
Inc.  (SOCM), Virginia Citizens for Better Reclamation, and the
Council of the Southern Mountains.   The newly signed accord
supplements a wide-ranging agreement over surface mining that OSM
and SOCM signed in January 1990.

"The agreement recognizes that all two-acre enforcement obligations
in Tennessee, and most of them in Kentucky and Virginia, have been
completed," Snyder said.   "This agreement also commits OSM to
follow a phase-out plan for completing the remaining two-acre work,
satisfying all remaining obligations under prior settlements and
court orders."  The work includes inspecting 535 old two-acre sites
(450 surface, 85 underground) over the next three years.

Although the original intent of the two-acre exemption was to ease
regulatory and financial burdens on small-scale surface coal mines,
actual experience proved much different.   Because of differing
interpretations of the law, as well as intentional efforts to
circumvent SMCRA, the two-acre exemption was repealed by Congress
in 1987.

As a result of its two-acre audit and enforcement operations to
date,  1,275 sites totaling in excess of 3,000 acres have been
reclaimed and $732,378 collected for the Abandoned Mine Reclamation
Fund.   Bills have also been sent for an additional $1,922,564.

Records on unresolved two-acre violations will be maintained in the
OSM Applicator Violator System, which is used to check compliance
records of applicants for new coal mine permits. Applications from
anyone responsible for the violations will be blocked.

According to Snyder, the phase-out of two-acre work will facilitate
a shift of OSM staff and resources to current regulatory and
enforcement activities,  including verifying and improving the
accuracy of data used in the Applicant Violator System.

- DOI -

Fact sheet attached.

FACT SHEET -- TWO-ACRE EXEMPTION

Congress originally intended the two-acre exemption to ease
regulatory and financial burdens on small-scale surface coal mines. 
 So-called "more and pop" operations of that size could ill afford
the expense of engineering and hydrologic studies needed to prepare
applications for regular permits required by the 1977 Surface
Mining Control & Reclamation Act (SMCRA).

The exemption also meant that surface coal mines smaller than two
acres did not have to pay tonnage-based fees into the national
Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund.   The theory was that mines of
that restricted size could not cause much appreciable environmental
disturbance, and forgoing production fees from such small
operations would not substantially cut into the reclamation fund's
income.

Actual experience proved much different.

Some surface coal mines reached the two-acre limit, then just kept
on going.   Others that pretended to be small independent mines
actually were part of large operations run by people who thought
they could mine all the coal they wanted without any regulations or
fees, so long as they mined it two acres at a time.

Two-acre violations were based on differing interpretations of
SMCRA's requirements concerning surface effects of underground coal
mining.   The courts eventually ruled that underground mines could
not use the two-acre exemption unless their combined ground
disturbance plus surface underlain by subterranean workings totaled
less than two acres.

Enforcement action by OSM and its state counterparts was thwarted
by the slow pace of civil action against violators. Enforcement
also proved ineffective against the hit-and-run violators who dug
up the land, grabbed the coal, then left the scene before the
authorities could catch up with them.

Conservation groups, frustrated by the lack of effective
enforcement,  filed suit against OSM in 1981, seeking tougher
action against bogus two-acre operators.   Several counties in
Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia were the
focus of the court cases and of stepped-up enforcement by OSM. Even
though Congress repealed the two-acre exemption in 1987, court
cases and enforcement activities proceeded, based on past two-acre
violations.

Of 375 unresolved reclamation fee cases left involving old two-acre
mines, OSM auditors will do follow-up work on 40 that have been
judged cost-effective for attempts at collection.   The remaining
335 involve mines in which no operator can be found or the net
worth of the operation is far less than the debt owed to the U.S.
Government.

April 12,  1991