The Interior Department is taking steps to increase the effectiveness of its 1996 biological opinion on surface mining amid broader efforts to fully revise it and the stream buffer zone rule, a senior agency official told Bloomberg BNA Oct. 27. The biological opinion was cited by a federal court in 2014 as a reason for vacating the 2008 stream buffer zone rule that would have relaxed restrictions on how close to streams coal mining waste can be dumped. Janice Schneider, assistant interior secretary for land and minerals management, told Bloomberg BNA that the agency will be updating the 1996 opinion as part of the effort to revise the stream protection rule (RIN 1029-AC63). But until that rule is finalized, Interior must rely on the existing 1996 opinion, just as the agency has reverted to the 1983 version of its stream buffer zone rule following the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia's February 2014 ruling.
展开▼
