As used in the New Mexico Mining Act:

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A. “affected area” means the area outside of the permit area where the land surface, surface water, ground water and air resources are impacted by mining operations within the permit area;

B. “commission” means the mining commission established in the New Mexico Mining Act;

C. “director” means the director of the division or his designee;

D. “division” means the mining and minerals division of the energy, minerals and natural resources department;

E. “existing mining operation” means an extraction operation that produced marketable minerals for a total of at least two years between January 1, 1970 and the effective date of the New Mexico Mining Act;

F. “exploration” means the act of searching for or investigating a mineral deposit, including sinking shafts, tunneling, drilling core and bore holes, digging pits, making cuts and other works for the purpose of extracting samples prior to commencement of development or extraction operations and the building of roads, access ways and other facilities related to such work; however, activities that cause no, or very little, surface disturbance, such as airborne surveys and photographs, use of instruments or devices that are hand carried or otherwise transported over the surface to perform magnetic, radioactive or other tests and measurements, boundary or claim surveying, location work or other work that causes no greater disturbance than is caused by ordinary lawful use of the area by persons not engaged in exploration are excluded from the meaning of “exploration”;

G. “mineral” means a nonliving commodity that is extracted from the earth for use or conversion into a saleable or usable product, but does not include clays, adobe, flagstone, potash, sand, gravel, caliche, borrow dirt, quarry rock used as aggregate for

construction, coal, surfacewater or subsurfacewater, geothermal resources, oil and natural gas together with other chemicals recovered with them, commodities, byproduct materials and wastes that are regulated by the nuclear regulatory commission or waste regulated under Subtitle C of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act;

H. “mining” means the process of obtaining useful minerals from the earth’s crust or from previously disposed or abandoned mining wastes, including exploration, open-cut mining and surface operation, the disposal of refuse from underground and in situ mining, mineral transportation, concentrating, milling, evaporation, leaching and other processing. “Mining” does not mean the exploration and extraction of potash, sand, gravel, caliche, borrow dirt and quarry rock used as aggregate in construction, the exploration and extraction of natural petroleum in a liquid or gaseous state by means of wells or pipes, the development or extraction of coal, the extraction of geothermal resources, smelting, refining, cleaning, preparation, transportation or other off-site operations not conducted on permit areas or the extraction, processing or disposal of commodities, byproduct materials or wastes or other activities regulated by the federal nuclear regulatory commission;

I. “new mining operation” means a mining operation that engages in a development or extraction operation after the effective date of the New Mexico Mining Act and that is not an existing mining operation;

J. “permit area” means the geographical area defined in the permit for a new mining operation or for an existing mining operation on which mining operations are conducted or cause disturbance; and

K. “reclamation” means the employment during and after a mining operation of measures designed to mitigate the disturbance of affected areas and permit areas and to the extent practicable, provide for the stabilization of a permit area following closure that will minimize future impact to the environment from the mining operation and protect air and water resources.