Montana Regulatory Program

What it does

We, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM), are approving an amendment to the Montana regulatory program under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA). Montana submitted this proposed amendment to OSM on its own initiative in response to a State law passed by the Montana Legislature--House Bill 616 (HB 616). The amendment to the Montana coal program regulations proposed that predictive modeling, along with monitoring data, may be included in a permittee's bond release application to prove compliance with their approved reclamation plans. Furthermore, Montana proposed that it may retain a portion of a bond for areas that are contributing suspended solids. HB 616 also included contingencies that apply to the proposed amendment but are not codified into the Montana Code Annotated (MCA): a severability clause, a contingent voidness clause, and an effective date clause.

The Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Office's summary, as published in the Federal Register.

What changed in the regulation

1 part of Title 30 of the Code of Federal Regulations:

30 CFR 926

Wording on eCFR: the day before it took effect and from the day it took effect (first part listed).

Compared with

The Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Office has published 21 final rules in 2026 so far, compared with 24 in all of 2025.

Counted by the Tribune from Federal Register records since Jan. 1, 2025.

What happens next and when

The effective date is August 14, 2026.

The agency's dates, word for word.

Check it yourself

• The document in the Federal Register
• Docket OSM-2025-0007 on Regulations.gov
• Title 30 on eCFR

The record as published

Source: the Federal Register (public domain). The document in the Federal Register