West Virginia legislation · 2025 Regular Session
West Virginia HB3498: Productive Energy Site Reclamation Waiver
Status: Introduced, March 18, 2025
The purpose of this bill is to create the Productive Energy Site Reclamation Waiver Program to streamline the process of transferring former surface mine sites into productive sites for new energy generation projects arid to optimize the flat land for energy projects that is otherwise in short supply in the state of West Virginia.
What the bill says
To amend the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, by adding a new section, designated §22-3-13b, relating to the creation of the Productive Energy Site Reclamation Waiver grant for variances by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection under the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act to convert formerly mined sites into productive energy sites; creating definitions; identifying criteria for application; and empowering the secretary to promulgate rules to implement this program article 3. surface coal mining and reclamation act. §22-3-13b. Productive Energy Site Recl.
From the introduced text, March 18, 2025:
A BILL to amend the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, by adding a new section, designated §22-3-13b, relating to the creation of the Productive Energy Site Reclamation Waiver grant for variances by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection under the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act to convert formerly mined sites into productive energy sites; creating definitions; identifying criteria for application; and empowering the secretary to promulgate rules to implement this program article 3. surface coal mining and reclamation act. §22-3-13b. Productive Energy Site Reclamation Waiver. (a) Legislative Findings: (1) The legislature finds and declares that it is in the public interest to transition surface mine sites, having exhausted their capacity for the extraction of coal and other materials, into new productive energy sites where possible. (2) The delegated authority to the state of West Virginia to administer the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act has created an obligation for contour restoration upon the state where the actual cost will exceed the bonded amount and that this obligation may, in the aggregate, amount to a burden on the state of several billion dollars. (3) At the conclusion of a surface mine operation the contour restoration process is unlikely to meet the highest and best use of that land where other opportunities for economic development will have a …