Hundreds of mines sit abandoned as overseeing agency faces staff shortages, watchdog says
ABC News recently reported on the potential for dangerous sinkholes nationwide.
Hundreds of abandoned coal mines sit unreclaimed across the country as the federal agency charged with overseeing them faces severe staffing shortages, a government watchdog report released on Thursday found.
The Government Accountability Office report found that the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) -- the Department of the Interior bureau tasked with regulating active coal mining -- is struggling with severe staffing losses and has failed to publish required annual performance reports to Congress since 2020.
Some of the findings were covered in a recent ABC News investigation, which revealed that dangerous sinkholes are opening as aging, abandoned mine infrastructure erodes beneath communities, roads and public lands.
An ABC News data analysis of records from two federal agencies uncovered hundreds of thousands of documented mine locations nationwide -- though no single, comprehensive federal database tracks every forgotten or abandoned shaft in the country.
The GAO report released this week shows that 56% of the nation's 5,247 permitted coal operations have recorded zero coal production since 2000.
Under federal law, operators are required to "reclaim" land once coal extraction ends, in order to prevent water pollution, erosion and public health risks. But, as ABC News previously reported, hundreds of long-idle sites remain unreclaimed while regulators lack the tracking tools to enforce compliance.
"Without measuring the length of time between a mine's date of last production and progress toward completing reclamation and returning the site to beneficial post-mining uses, OSMRE is missing key information on mines that may be at risk for not being fully reclaimed by the operator," investigators wrote.
The report also found that OSMRE saw its workforce plunge by 35% -- from 408 employees in 2024 down to 265 by May 2026. Investigators attributed the drop to "deferred resignations, a hiring freeze for the executive branch, and restructuring within the Department of the Interior".
OSMRE has also failed to publish its statutorily required annual report to the president and Congress since 2020, citing "other priorities," according to the report.
"By not issuing annual reports, OSMRE is forgoing an opportunity to provide Congress with information about program performance nationwide that it could use to take actions to help OSMRE fulfill the goals of SMCRA and hold the agency accountable for results," investigators wrote.
Among the recommendations issued by the watchdog group: That the Department of the Interior conducts strategic workforce planning for OSMRE, that OSMRE develops performance measures to track reclamation timelines for abandoned mines, and that OSMRE resumes publishing annual reports to Congress.
A spokesperson for OSMRE did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
A top federal official overseeing coal mine reclamation previously told ABC News that government agencies do not know the locations of every abandoned mine in the country.
"Mining back in 1865 or 1880 or 1890, there are no records of that. No one kept records," Lanny Erdos, an official with OSMRE, told ABC News. "There potentially can be mines out there that we would have no idea that they are there until they express themselves in some adverse way."
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