WASHINGTON - After years of attempts to extend and revamp the Abandoned Mine Land program, its fate came down to last-minute deal making and Senate approval after midnight on the last day of the session.

An aggressive push by coal-state lawmakers, along with concessions on an unrelated issue for conservatives objecting to its cost, finally ensured that the proposal passed. The measure was included in a much larger tax, trade and energy package that awaits President Bush's signature.

The extension of the AML fee means $1.6 billion over the next 15 years for Wyoming and at least tens of millions of dollars for Montana, lawmakers said. The AML program, designed to help clean up abandoned mine sites and related pollution, taxes every ton of coal produced in America and returns some of the money to the states for their use.

Following years of pushing, supporters of the extension looked again this session for a larger bill to which they could attach the AML measure. The movement began this summer, when Congress took up pension reform legislation.

Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who chaired the House-Senate committee hammering out a pension agreement, used his position to try to include the AML provision in the legislation.

"I got them to agree that the abandoned mine land needed to be a part of that," Enzi said. "I think because I was chairing the committee, they agreed that it could be."

Enzi said that a coalition of coal companies, unions, states and miner's health groups joined last year to put forward proposals that wound up in the bill.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who authored the measure, and lawmakers from other coal-producing states including Wyoming and West Virginia also pushed hard to keep it in the pension bill.

But eventually congressional leaders stripped out several measures, including AML, that could have held up the pension bill. They put the measures - raising the minimum wage, reducing the estate tax and extending some tax breaks - together into a separate bill.

The House passed but the Senate voted down that legislation, primarily because of controversial estate tax provisions. Congressional leaders agreed to try to pass the tax portions of the bill, which included AML, during the post-election congressional session.

As adjournment loomed, that bill seemed one of the few likely to pass. Lawmakers rushed to attach numerous measures to it. Negotiations primarily focused on tax and trade and some other issues, but not AML, according to an aide involved in the talks.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the top Democrat on the Finance Committee with jurisdiction over the bill, helped lead the negotiations.

About a week before Congress finished for the year, the House and Senate negotiators talked about what would be in the final tax and trade bill. During that discussion, Baucus raised the AML issue and requested it be included, according to the aide.

Baucus had advocated for the measure earlier in the year and Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., also asked him to include it in the tax package. The Wyoming, Pennsylvania and West Virginia delegations pushed particularly hard for the measure.

A group of 14 Republican senators sent a letter early last week to Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., asking him to keep AML in the tax bill. They noted that the AML provision had been part of the earlier failed tax package that leaders had promised to bring up again.

"Earlier this year, you agreed to help us reauthorize this vital program before the end of the 109th Congress," they wrote. "Ensuring that the AML reauthorization remains a part of the agreed upon tax extenders package that must be passed before Congress adjourns is the most sensible way to make this happen."

After Baucus brought up the AML issue, House negotiators said they would have to check with their side about the provision, the aide said. Some conservatives in both the House and Senate objected to the cost of the measure. The House negotiators finally agreed to a deal: AML could be included if the bill also contained a measure expanding health savings accounts, which conservatives favored.

The final bill, with both the AML and the health savings measures, won approval on the last day of the congressional session.

The latest work was built on years of maneuvering.

Congress established a 15-year AML program in 1977. It imposed a tax on each ton of coal, with the revenue to be split evenly between the federal government and states to use to clean up abandoned mines and address coal-related pollution.

But the states never got the full share of money owed them, lawmakers noted, as money from the trust fund went to other federal spending.

In 1992, Congress extended the AML fees until 2004 and added a provision that authorized the use of AML interest to pay for health benefits of eligible retired miners.

Attempts to renew the tax became stymied in a split between lawmakers from Eastern and Western states. Western states like Wyoming by then had the biggest mining industry and so paid the most into the fund. But Eastern states had a higher number of abandoned mines needing work.

In 2003, Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., teamed up with Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., to write a measure that would extend the AML tax for 15 years. Rahall was the top Democrat on the House Resources Committee, while Cubin chaired the key subcommittee on the issue.

Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., pushed on the Senate side. But their effort to attach the measure to a broad energy bill failed. The next year, President Bush and Pennsylvania lawmakers proposed a separate measure to extend the AML fees.

Cubin and Rahall opposed it and reintroduced their bill. Meanwhile, Thomas and Rockefeller introduced separate measures in the Senate. All of those failed and Congress instead ended up extending the fee for nine months.

In 2005, Cubin tried to use her position as a member of the House-Senate conference on an energy bill to include it in that legislation. Thomas pushed his bill in the Senate. But disputes over who should get the money kept it from passing.

Enzi said some of his aides worked 20 hours a day during the last week of the pension conference and also the last week of Congress in order to successfully keep the AML provision.

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