Our View: Leave AML funds alone

With the upcoming legislative session, members of the house and senate will more than likely decide to use $242 million in Abandon Mine Lands funding the state is eligible for to supplement the state’s budget.

As the state looks at more than $200 million in reduced revenue this year and the money would help to stabilize the state, but using those funds for anything outside their intended use is a mistake. It’s happened before, with the University of Wyoming benefiting from funds originally given to the state to mitigate and reclaim land impacted by mining in the past, so it isn’t a stretch to assume it would happen again.

The money should be used to prevent those problems associated with mining. Reliance is a great example of a place needing AML funding. A portion of the town in undermined and coal fires continue to burn beneath the ground. Areas of Rock Springs also continue to suffer from the effects of the mining industry, most notably when work on the county’s health and human services building and to stop briefly when workers discovered a mine void under the building.

Excluding those locations, the AML funding would help mitigate places impacted by mining, both surface and underground operations. While local mines have great reclamation records, there are many instances where companies across the nation have walked away from their commitment to reclaim the land they mine. Those funds can help hide the scars mining has caused.

By moving those funds to the general fund, the legislature would essentially say they don’t care about solving problems created by some mining activity that has occurred since the 1800s. Mine voids and unreclaimed land are someone else’s problem.

While it’s hard to argue the money would be wasted in the general fund, as we admit there are some worthy causes it would be spent on, but there is ample opportunity for it to be wasted as well.

Funding items like matching dollars for UW’s High Altitude Training Center and more studies into how feasible it is to take federal land into state management would be a waste.

AML funds need to be spent on the mine mitigation issues they’re designated for. Otherwise, the state could be on the hook later on for problems that could have been corrected through the AML program.

It’s hard to argue how UW absolutely needed their high altitude performance center when some smoldering mine voids open up in Reliance.