Wyoming and Montana filed suit against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Thursday seeking to overturn the agency’s rule to end federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin — the nation’s most prolific coal-producing region. Coal mines on the Wyoming side of the basin, which also extends into Montana, directly employ about 5,000 workers, according to the state.
The federal agency recently issued its final decision regarding a supplemental environmental impact statement and proposed amendment to land use plans for its Buffalo and Miles City, Montana field offices, selecting a “no future coal leasing alternative.” It justified the move, in part, by noting that coal companies have not nominated a major new federal coal lease in the region in more than 10 years, and that existing leases not affected by the ban allow mining to continue through 2041 at the current rate of coal production.
But the states’ petition for review alleges the BLM’s decision to end coal leasing is unjustified and fails to comply with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
“Instead of working with the states to address their concerns, BLM pushed through their narrow-minded agenda to stop using coal, ignoring the multiple-use mandate and the economic impacts of this decision, including skyrocketing electricity bills for consumers,” Gov. Mark Gordon said Thursday in a prepared statement. “They did not do their job properly.”
The lawsuit was long sought by local officials in northeast Wyoming, as well as the far-right Wyoming Freedom Caucus of state lawmakers, who criticized Gordon for not filing suit earlier in the process. But the state did not have legal standing to sue until the BLM issued its final order, which came in November.
Gordon laid out his legal strategy at a town hall event in June in Gillette, assuring local leaders and residents he’d spare no resources in seeking to overturn the ban. He tapped the state’s $1.2 million “coal litigation fund” earlier this year to prepare Wyoming’s case against the BLM and announced an additional $800,000 allocation to the fund to support the effort.
Wyoming is now engaged in more than 50 lawsuits against Biden administration regulations that threaten the state’s fossil fuel industries, according to Gordon’s office.
“I look forward to the courts scrutinizing this misguided and politically-driven amendment which consciously ignored our country’s increasing demand for affordable energy,” he said.
Is there an available record of the results and/or status of the 50+ lawsuits filed against Biden administration lawsuits?
Ho hum . Wyoming sues the Feds over fossil fuels. Must be Thursday.
Never mind the biggie coal corporations haven’t really applied for any new leases in a decade. Duke it out in court all you want, but in the end the market will do the deciding . You can’t lease mine and sell what the world no longer wants.
Feds are wrong. Those minerals belong to USA citizens and need to be utilized. Our power plants run clean with the scrubbers. We can inject the flue exhaust underground on site. Nuc power plants will have same exhaust gas emissions. Same problems in heating the atmosphere. We should have been mixing fly ash with cement years ago to make stronger longer lasting concrete. Solutions are there. Just not used
The Kentucky National Coal Museum in 2017 switched from coal to solar energy to fix their ailing heating system. That’s all you need to know regarding global reduction of demand for coal. Reviving Campell County coal is a loser, they know it but the state refuses to accept that.
In 1974 Gary Glass, then state geologist, advised our class at UW, as we were getting to ready to spend the next day at the Jim Bridger PP east of Rock Springs. He advised back then that Wyo had a 50 year supply of coal in CC but that was referring to supply. Little did he know that it would be demand that would result in mines closing or reducing production not supply.
We should have been limiting human population growth in the US so that it remained below the human carrying capacity of its habitat. Not doing so shows how stupid we “top” monkeys truly are. All those “fixes” you propose are essentially worthless ploys that will benefit and further enrich the robber barons. They take energy to implement and maintain as well. Sort of like electromobiles…another big con that stupid USans are falling for.