Interior Department removes 33-year-old mining rule that was already suspended

A regulation that set time limits for backfilling and grading at surface mines — suspended in 1992 but never formally deleted from the rulebook — is now officially rescinded. Mining operators have been operating without these requirements for three decades; this just removes the dead text.

This is regulatory housekeeping, not a structural shift. A rule that was already unenforced for 33 years is being removed from the books. The practical effect is zero: mining operations continue exactly as they have since 1992. What matters here is that it took this long to clean it up — a small signal that the Interior Department is finally clearing out contradictions between what the rules say and what the rules actually require in practice.