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• -33- • <br />bottom line issue.. It's been said this is not a mining law, it's <br />a reclamation law. The thing that is really seriously worse and <br />just (a) whole other category of unpermitted operations, those <br />that have no permits, but should have had, 'cause they started <br />after 1973, they're unpermitted, they've stopped operating, the <br />operators walked away from them, they're totally unreclaimed and <br />they're going to stay that way unless you do something about it. <br />It's this very category that causes us in some ways even more <br />concern than the currently illegal mining operator. You had a <br />direct example of this in the Energy Fuels' situation; you reacted, <br />we thought, very cooperatively, set a very good precedent, not <br />the Peabody precedent, the Energy Fuels' precedent, remember <br />these was a lot of acreage involved there; where they had finished <br />their mining, unpermitted, and that held up their new permit until <br />they got a reclamation plan and a bond on that property. This <br />is what 120 says--it's not a punitive provision at all', it's a <br />very familiar provision in all the states, you know, all across <br />the country. It says in order to have a permit program, where you <br />can have reclamation plans and bonds so that you as a Board can <br />guarantee reclamation, you've got to have a situation where you <br />bring all the operators in and all the operations that should be, <br />being reclaimed. And this Section 120 is a very, very familiar, <br />very standard device to give to you the enforcement leverage, <br />today you can throw that away, really, by setting a reverse Energy <br />Fuels precedent. And we're going to worry about that. Mr. Sullivan <br />asked a very good question, I don't know if the answer s• are clear <br />from what's gone on so far, and that is, 120 doesn't apply til <br />the Board makes a finding. If the Board--you'll forgive me if I <br />do the "hear no evil, see no evil" analysis--if the Board just <br />