The article's goal is to indicate the chosen problems concerning security of brown coal deposits for opencast mining activity. These problems are particularly associated with the procedure of spatial planning on commune's level and with the assurance that the regions which have mineral deposits will be secured as the result of this planning. Furthermore the article brings up the case of deposits' ownership which - unfortunately - in Polish law is determined by the method of exploitation. Significant part of the article is dedicated to the issue of showing the position of opencast brown coal exploitation as a public goal in the understanding of estate management act. The presented problems focus on the imperfections in current law regulations and improper practices that are in use. An attempt to show more efficient solutions concerning the particular areas was made. The proposed solutions are based on such special areas of protection as Nature 2000 areas which are very efficiently protected by the nature protection act or agricultural and forest areas protected by the act about the protection of agricultural and forest areas. These solutions are shown as a hypothetical way to solve the problem of securing brown coal deposits. The article tries to explain what kind of situations that happen in practice minimize the possibility of running an opencast mining activity. The closing thesis shows the symptoms of changes direction. Because of the excess of bureaucratic procedures (namely numerous agreements, opinions) these changes are becoming necessary to enable the procedure of making brown coal deposits accessible and to run accompanying investments.