Preambles to rules published in the Federal Register are prepared by the agency for readers who are not expert in the subject area.
Preambles provide the basis and purpose for each rule or proposal.
The following preamble is important because it provides the basis for the original Surface Mining Law regulations published in 1979. Many of these orginal rules and preambles have been revised. Readers should always check the Code of Federal Regulations for a complete listing of updates. The files in the following index are large and may take a few moments to load.