Deluzio, Lee propose financial accountability measures for owners of abandoned mines

A pair of Pennsylvania lawmakers are proposing legislation to make owners of idle mines accountable for repairing and preventing future environmental damage caused by resource extraction.

U.S. Reps Chris Deluzio (D-17th District) and Summer Lee (D-12th District) announced bills Tuesday as part of a three-piece legislative package designed to address what they described as a growing crisis of “zombie mines” polluting waterways and endangering the public long after operations ended. 

“Western Pennsylvania and other coal communities powered our country for decades, but the industry left behind a lot of dangerous and polluting, ‘zombie mines,” Deluzio said. “It is time to clean up the mess they left behind.”

Their announcement came about a week after the U.S Department of the Interior announced funding Pennsylvania and states and tribal nations will receive from the federal government to remediate and reclaim abandoned mine lands.

The commonwealth will receive $229.4 million this year. That’s about $15 million less than in 2025 after legislation diverting about $500 million from the fund for other uses as part of a budget package that President Donald Trump signed earlier this year.

The reallocation of the funding to wildfire management and National Forest Service operations drew criticism from environmentalists who said Pennsylvania’s coal regions would feel the impact. The commonwealth will receive the largest share of the funds.

Critics have characterized the transfer as a raid on the trust fund established by the 1977 Surface Mine Reclamation Act, the primary U.S. law regulating the environmental impact of coal mining. It requires mine operators to restore mined land and places a fee on mined coal to fund cleanup work at mines abandoned before the law was passed.

Deluzio’s bill, the Bond Improvement and Reclamation Assurance Act and Lee’s bill, the Coal Cleanup Taxpayer Protection Act — along with a third piece of legislation Don Beyer (VA-08), the Stream Protection and Vegetation Restoration Act — form a comprehensive package to hold mining companies accountable for damage, the lawmakers said.

“For too long, coal companies have been allowed to walk away from the damage they leave behind, harming the health of our communities and leaving taxpayers with the bill,” Lee said.

Her bill would end the practice of self-bonding, meaning rather than simply promising to pay to clean up based on the financial health of the company, mining concerns would be required to secure funding by issuing bonds the government may use if remediation is required.

The legislation would require states to perform actuarial studies every five years to ensure bond pools are stable and for periodic revaluation of non-cash collateral used to pay for clean ups.

Deluzio’s proposal would require mining companies to post bonds payable to the U.S. government as intended by the Surface Mine Reclamation Act.

“The bill would stop corporations from playing financial games like using subsidiaries or shell companies to dodge financial responsibility for mine cleanup,” Deluzio’s office said in a description of the bill.

Pennsylvania has the most acres of abandoned and unreclaimed mine lands and most abandoned wells of any state in the nation. The abandoned mine land fund is being used to address 450 abandoned mine sites across the state, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.