**GAO-05-377**                      Published: Jun 20, 2005. Publicly Released: Jul 25, 2005.                  

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## Highlights

Since the General Mining Act of 1872, billions of dollars in hardrock minerals, such as gold, have been extracted from federal land now managed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM). For years, some mining operators did not reclaim land, creating environmental, health, and safety risks. Beginning in 1981, federal regulations required all operators to reclaim BLM land disturbed by these operations. In 2001, federal regulations began requiring operators to provide financial assurances before they began exploration or mining operations. GAO was asked to determine the (1) types, amount, and coverage of financial assurances operators currently use; (2) extent to which financial assurance providers and others have paid to reclaim land not reclaimed by the operator since BLM began requiring financial assurances; and (3) reliability and sufficiency of BLM's automated information system (LR2000) for managing financial assurances for hardrock operations.

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## Topics

Auditing and Financial Management

Data integrityFederal regulationsFinancial analysisFinancial managementInformation systemsLand managementLand reclamationMine safetyMiningMining legislationSystems evaluation