Twenty years ago, Balzania put in place regulations requiring operators of surface mines to pay for the reclamation of mined-out land  Since then, reclamation technology has not improved
Yet, the average reclamation cost for a surface coal mine being reclaimed today is only four dollars per ton of coal that the mine produced, less than half what it cost to reclaim surface mines in the years immediately after the regulations took effect
Even after Balzania began requiring surface mine operators to pay reclamation costs, coal mines in Balzania continued to be less expensive to operate than coal mines in almost any other country.