The authority to collect fees from coal producing states to recover abandoned mine lands expires Sept. 30th. Part of that fee has gone to the United Mine Workers Combined Benefit Fund to help the more than 17,000 coal miners whose companies no longer exist. Jeff Jarrett, the director of the Office of Surface Mining says the new fees will ensure that transfers to the CBF continue.

“Our legal mandate is to provide certain monies to help defray those cost and we will continue to, with this rule, provide those resources to the Combined Benefit Fund to defray those costs. But in the long run even that is not sufficient. Additional action by congress we believe will be necessary.”

The fees will be based on the amount of interest earned on the $1.6 billion un-appropriated dollars in the AML fund. Ron Tull Washington