(a) The Director does not approve the following provisions of the proposed program amendment concerning permit renewals that Kentucky submitted on April 23, 1998:

(1) The phrase “* * * if a permit has expired or * * *” in KRS 350.060(16).

(2) The following sentence in KRS 350.060(16): “Upon the submittal of a permit renewal application, the operator or permittee shall be deemed to have timely filed the permit renewal application and shall be entitled to continue, under the terms of the expired permit, the surface coal mining operation, pending the issuance of the permit renewal.”

(b) Subsections (2) through (6) of the amendment submitted as House Bill 599 on May 9, 2000, are hereby not approved, effective June 20, 2001.

(c) The amendment submitted by letter dated April 12, 2002, proposing a new section of the Kentucky Revised Statutes at Chapter 350 and referenced as Kentucky House Bill 405, is hereby not approved, effective November 20, 2002.

(d) The phrase “* * * coal mining activities and * * *” in KRS 350.445(3)(g) is not approved.

(e) The exemption from the engineer inspection requirements of subsection 9 for an impoundment with no embankment structure, that is completely incised, or is created by a depression left by backfilling and grading, that is not a sedimentation pond or coal mine waste impoundment and is not otherwise intended to facilitate active mining at section 1(9)(c) at 405 KAR 16/18:100 is not approved. The exemption from examination for an impoundment with no embankment structure, that is completely incised or created by a depression left by backfilling and grading but not meeting MSHA requirements at 30 CFR 77.216 or not meeting the Class B and C classifications at section 1(10)(b) is not approved to the extent that it is not implemented and managed in accordance with the provisions of OSM Directive TSR-2.

(f) The changes to Kentucky's Notice of Assessment of Civil Penalties and Penalty Assessment Conference Officer's Report that specify that prepayment of a proposed assessment or penalty is no longer required are not approved.

(g) We are deferring our decision on the bi-annual actuarial review provision of 350 KRS 350.509 until such time as we are able to evaluate the stability of the Kentucky Reclamation Guaranty Fund (KRGF) over its first three full years of implementation.

(h) We are not approving 405 KAR 10:015 8(7).

(i) We are not approving revisions to KRS 350.0301 made by 2018 Ky. Acts ch. 85 that would have eliminated a requirement that Kentucky promulgate regulations providing that operators must place proposed civil penalty assessments into an escrow account prior to a formal hearing on the amount of the assessment.