1. "Act" means the Utah Mined Land Reclamation Act, enacted in 1975, as amended, in Section 40-8-1.
2. "Adjudicative proceeding" means an agency action or proceeding that determines the legal rights, duties, privileges, immunities, or other legal interests of one or more identifiable persons, including agency actions to grant, deny, revoke, suspend, change, annul, withdraw, or amend an authority, right, or license; and judicial review of such actions. Those matters not governed by Title 63G, Chapter 4, Administrative Procedures Act, (1953, as amended) may not be included within this definition.
3. "Agency" means a board, commission, department, division, officer, council, office, committee, commission, bureau, or other administrative unit of this state, including the agency head, agency employees, or other persons acting on behalf of or under the authority of the agency head, but does not mean the Legislature, the courts, the governor, a political subdivision of the state, or an administrative unit of a political subdivision of the state.

4. "Agency head" means an individual or body of individuals in whom the ultimate legal authority of the agency is vested by statute.

   "Amendment" is an insignificant change in the approved notice of intention. Whether a change is insignificant is outlined in Subsection R647-4-119(2).

5. "Approved Notice of Intention" means a formally filed notice of intention to begin mining operations, including amendments or revisions thereto that is determined to be complete and contains a mining and reclamation plan, which has been approved by the Division. A notice of intention for exploration having a disturbed area of 10 acres or less, or a small mining operation must be determined complete in writing by the Division, but does not require a mining and reclamation plan.

   "Basalt" (a) means fine-grained mafic igneous rock formed in the tertiary or quaternary periods. (b) A Utah Geological Survey or a United States Geological Survey published map that classifies material as "basalt" is prima facie evidence that the material meets the requirements of Subsection (a). An unmapped area may be classified by a Utah Geological Survey geologist or a professional geologist licensed in the state.

6. "Board" means the Utah Board of Oil, Gas and Mining. The Board shall hear appeals of adjudicative proceedings which begin before the Division as well as an adjudicative proceedings and other proceedings which begin before the Board. The Board may appoint a Hearing Examiner for its hearings in accordance with the Rules of Practice and Procedure before the Board of Oil, Gas and Mining.
7. "Bonded Area" means the area of a small mine or exploration project, or part of the permit area for large mines, to be covered by the reclamation surety. The operator must include, with the notice of intention and updated as applicable, a map showing the areas covered by the bond, the approximate dates when the surety for these areas was posted, and when partial bond release and final bond release were approved by the division.
8. "Clinker Production" means the pyroprocessing of raw meal within a rotary kiln, where it is heated to high temperatures, typically 1,400 degrees Celsius to 1,500 degrees Celsius, to induce chemical reactions that form cement clinker.
9. "Deleterious Materials" means earth, waste or introduced materials exposed by mining operations to air, water, weather or microbiological processes, which would likely produce chemical or physical conditions in the soils or water that are detrimental to the biota or hydrologic systems.
10. "Deposit" or "mineral deposit" means an accumulation of mineral matter in the form of consolidated rock, unconsolidated materials, solutions, or otherwise occurring on the surface, beneath the surface, or in the waters of the land from which a useful product may be produced, extracted or obtained, or which is extracted by underground mining methods for underground storage. "Deposit" or "mineral deposit" excludes sand, gravel, rock aggregate, basalt for an area not to exceed 50 acres, water, geothermal steam, and oil and gas, but includes oil shale and bituminous sands extracted by mining operations.
11. "Development" means the work performed in relation to a deposit following its discovery, but prior to and in contemplation of production mining operations, aimed at preparing the site for mining operations; further defining the ore deposit by drilling or other means; conducting pilot plant operations; and constructing roads or ancillary facilities.
12. "Disturbed Area" means the surface land disturbed by mining operations. The disturbed area for small mining operations may not exceed ten acres in an incorporated area of a county or 20 acres in an unincorporated area of a county. The disturbed area for large mining operations may not exceed the acreage described in the approved notice of intention.
13. "Division" means the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining. The Division Director or designee is the Presiding Officer for an informal adjudicative proceedings which begin before the Division in accordance with Rule R647-5.
14. "Exempt Mining Operations" means those mining operations which were previously exempt from the Act because less than 500 tons of material was mined in a period of 12 consecutive months or less than two acres of land was excavated or used as a disposal site in a period of 12 consecutive months. These exemptions were eliminated by statutory amendments in 1986 and are no longer available.
15. "Exploration" means surface disturbing activities conducted to discover a deposit or mineral deposit, delineating the boundaries of a deposit or mineral deposit, and identifying regions or specific areas in which deposits or mineral deposits are most likely to exist. "Exploration" includes: sinking shafts; tunneling; drilling holes; digging pits or cuts; building roads and other access ways.
16. "Gravel" means a naturally occurring unconsolidated to moderately consolidated accumulation of rock and mineral particles, the dominant size range being between 4mm and 75mm, which has been deposited by sedimentary processes.
17. "Land affected" means the surface and subsurface of an area within the state where mining operations are being or will be conducted, including: (a) on-site private ways, roads, and railroads; (b) land excavations; (c) exploration sites; (d) drill sites or workings; (e) refuse banks or spoil piles; (f) evaporation or settling ponds; (g) stockpiles; (h) leaching dumps; (i) placer areas; (j) tailings ponds or dumps; (k) work, parking, storage, or waste discharge areas, structures, and facilities. Land affected does not include: (x) lands which have been reclaimed in accordance with an approved plan or as otherwise approved by the Board, (y) lands on which mining operations ceased before July 1, 1977, or (z) lands on which previously exempt mining operations ceased before April 29, 1989.
18. "Large Mining Operations" means mining operations which have a disturbed area of more than ten surface acres at a time in an incorporated area of a county or more than 20 surface acres at a time in an unincorporated area of a county.
19. "License" means a franchise, permit, certification, approval, registration, charter, or similar form of authorization required by statute.

20. "Mining operations" means those activities conducted on the surface of the land for the exploration for, development of, or extraction of a mineral deposit, including, surface mining and the surface effects of underground and in situ mining; on-site transportation, concentrating, milling, evaporation, and other primary processing.

    "Mining operation" does not include: the extraction of sand, gravel, and rock aggregate; the extraction of basalt for an area not to exceed 50 acres; the extraction of oil and gas; the extraction of geothermal steam; secondary processing; off-site operations and transportation; reconnaissance activities; or activities which will not cause significant surface resource disturbance and do not involve the use of mechanized earth-moving equipment, such as bulldozers or backhoes.

21. "Notice of Intention" means a notice of intention to start mining operations, that provide the complete information required for authorization to conduct mining operations, and includes amendments or revisions thereto.
22. "Off-site" means the land areas that are outside of or beyond the on-site land.
23. "On-site" means the surface lands on or under which surface or underground mining operations are conducted. A series of related properties under the control of a single operator but separated by small parcels of land controlled by others will be considered a single site unless excepted by the Division. Noncontiguous mining and exploration disturbances, under the control of one operator, will be considered as one operation regardless of aggregate acreage, when the outer most boundary of one disturbed areas within a two mile radius of the outer most boundary of another disturbed area. Those sites aggregating less than 20 acres in an unincorporated area or ten acres in an incorporated area will be considered Small Mine or Exploration sites as appropriate. Several properties linked together, as described as noncontiguous mining and exploration will be considered as one, for the purposes of permitting and bonding. All roads connecting two or more noncontiguous sites that were constructed for accessing these sites for mining purposes, or were existing but significantly upgraded, will be considered in the permitting process.
24. "Operator" means a natural person, corporation, limited liability company, association, partnership, receiver, trustee, executor, administrator, guardian, fiduciary, agent, or other organization or representative, either public or private, owning, controlling, conducting, or managing a mining operation or proposed mining operation.
25. "Owner" means a natural person, corporation, limited liability company, association, partnership, receiver, trustee, executor, administrator, guardian, fiduciary, agent, or other organization or representative, either public or private, owning, controlling, conducting, or managing a mineral deposit or the surface of lands employed in mining operations.
26. "Party" means the Board, Division or other person commencing an adjudicative proceeding, respondents, person permitted by the Board to intervene in the proceeding, and persons authorized by statute or agency rule to participate as parties in an adjudicative proceeding.
27. "Permit" means a permit order.

28. "Permit Order" means an action by the division that:

    1. (a)(i) approves a notice of intention to commence a large mining operation or revise or amend a large mining operation; or

       1. (ii) declares a notice of intention for a large mining operation deficient;

    2. (b)(i) accepts as complete a notice of intention to commence a small mining operation or amend a small mining operation; and

       1. (ii) approves the amount and form of surety for a notice of intention; or
    3. (c) approves a notice of intention to conduct an exploration operation or amend an exploration operation.
29. "Person" means an individual, group of individuals, partnership, corporation, limited liability company, association, political subdivision or its units, governmental subdivision or its units, public or private organization or another agency.
30. "Precalcination" means the partial calcination, in a precalciner, of the raw meal, where a portion of the calcium carbonate is decomposed into calcium oxide and carbon dioxide, in a separate vessel upstream of the rotary kiln.
31. "Preheating" means the process of increasing the temperature of the raw meal, prior to introducing into the kiln, using waste heat from the kiln exhaust gases. This is typically accomplished in a preheater tower consisting of a series of cyclones.
32. "Presiding Officer" means an agency head, or an individual or body of individuals designated by the agency head, by the agency's rules, or by statute to conduct an adjudicative proceeding. For Title R647, the Board, or its appointed Hearing Examiner, shall be considered the Presiding Officer of an appeal of informal adjudicative proceedings which begin before the Division as well as an adjudicative proceedings which begin before the Board. The Division Director their designee shall be considered a Presiding Officer for an informal adjudicative proceedings which begin before the Division in accordance with Rule R647-5. If fairness to the parties is not compromised, an agency may substitute one Presiding Officer for another during a proceeding.
33. "Primary Processing" means crushing, bagging, grinding, comminution, size classification, mineral concentration, magnetic and electrostatic separation, gravity separation, flotation, sedimentation, thickening, filtration, product drying, tailings disposal, washing, beneficiation, and leaching. Extracting bitumen or kerogen from the rock matrix is considered primary processing.
34. "Raw Meal Preparation" means the preparation of homogeneous mixture of raw materials, including crushing, grinding, proportioning, and blending, to achieve the desired chemical composition for cement production.
35. "Reclamation" means actions performed during or after mining operations to shape, stabilize, revegetate, or otherwise treat the land affected to achieve a safe and ecologically stable condition and use which will be consistent with local environmental conditions and land management practices.
36. "Regrade or Grade" means to physically alter the topography of land surface.
37. "Respondent" means a person against whom an adjudicative proceeding is initiated, whether by an agency or an other person.
38. "Revision" means a significant change in the approved notice of intention. Whether a change is significant is outlined in Subsection R647-4-119(2).
39. "Rock Aggregate" means those consolidated rock materials associated with a sand deposit, a gravel deposit, or a sand and gravel deposit, that were created by alluvial sedimentary processes. The definition of rock aggregate specifically excludes solid rock in the form of bedrock, other than basalt, which is exposed at the surface of the earth or overlain by unconsolidated material.
40. "Sand" means a naturally occurring unconsolidated to moderately consolidated accumulation of rock and mineral particles, the dominant size range being between 0.004mm to 4mm, which has been deposited by sedimentary processes.

41. "Secondary Processing" means:

    1. (a) smelting, which includes any metallurgical operation in which metal is separated by fusion from those impurities with which it may be chemically combined or physically mixed;
    2. (b) refining, which includes operations performed after crude metals have been extracted from their ores in order to obtain them in a condition of higher purity;
    3. (c) refining operations for bitumen and kerogen;
    4. (d) any hydrometallurgical operations, including autoclave processing;
    5. (e) any other pyrometallurgical operations, including roasting and sintering;
    6. (f) raw meal preparation;
    7. (g) preheating;

    8. (h) precalcination; or

       1. (i) clinker production.
42. "Shut Down" means an absence of on-site mining operations on land affected under a complete or approved notice of intention where the operator intends that mining operations are permanently terminated, or the Division, after notice, makes a determination pursuant to Subsection R647-3-113(7) or R647-4-117(6).
43. "Small Mining Operations" means mining operations which have a disturbed area of ten or fewer surface acres at a time in an incorporated area of a county or 20 or fewer surface acres at a time in an unincorporated area of a county.
44. "Surface Mining" means mining conducted on the surface of the land including open pit, strip, or auger mining; dredging; quarrying; leaching; surface evaporation operations; reworking abandoned dumps and tailings and activities related thereto.
45. "Suspension" means an absence of ongoing operations on land affected under an approved notice of intention, where the operator intends that operations will eventually resume.
46. "Underground Mining" means mining carried out beneath the surface by shafts, tunnels or other underground mine openings.

KEY: minerals reclamation

Date of Last Change: August 27, 2025

Notice of Continuation: April 27, 2023

Authorizing, and Implemented or Interpreted Law: 40-8-1 et seq.