Abandoned Mine Reclamation Safety Act

Summary

Abandoned Mine Reclamation Safety Act This bill directs the Department of the Interior to promulgate regulations for the safe and environmentally responsible reopening of abandoned mines in order to facilitate the cleanup or remediation of conditions at them. Such regulations shall: apply to both coal and noncoal mines; ensure that an abandoned mine is reopened in a manner that protects the safety of workers involved in the reopening, and minimizes the risk of a blowout or other uncontrolled release of water into the environment; require development of emergency response and notification plans before reopening any abandoned mine that poses a risk of such an uncontrolled release of water; provide for the long-term care and maintenance of hardrock mine bulkheads; require approval of reopening plans by a professional engineer; and incorporate recommendations from the Bureau of Reclamation report titled "Technical Evaluation of the Gold King Mine Incident San Juan County, Colorado," and dated October 2015. Interior may seek to arrange with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to study best practices for reopening abandoned mines in order to facilitate cleanup or remediation, and recommend related regulatory and legislative action. Interior shall initiate a program to identify and regularly monitor known surface and underground abandoned mine sites and features posing the highest risk of an inadvertent release of water into the environment.

This text is taken from the official record. PoliticalRepo does not editorialize.

Timeline

No timeline events have been ingested for this record yet.

Votes

No vote records are attached yet.

Versions

No version snapshots stored. Document URLs remain at the source.

Documents

3 official files

• Introduced in House (text)

  Introduced in House · EN · 6 January 2016

  ViewDownloadOpen at official source

• Introduced in House (PDF)

  Introduced in House · EN · 6 January 2016

  ViewDownloadOpen at official source

• Introduced in House

  summary · EN · 6 January 2016

  Open at official source

Sponsors

No sponsors or actors listed by the source.

Related records

No cross-record relationships stored yet.