Current work in wildlife, rivers, public lands, and climate

Monday, April 4, 2011
Groups to Interior Department: Put Clean Energy First

Lawsuit Filed Challenging Interior’s Sham Coal Leasing Program in Nation’s Largest Coal Producing Region
Contact: Jeremy Nichols (303) 573-4898 x 1303

Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana—WildEarthGuardians, the Sierra Club, and Defenders of Wildlife today filed suit forclean energy, challenging Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s and the Bureau ofLand Management’s refusal to properly manage and plan coal leasing in thenation’s largest coal producing region.

“If we have any chance of confronting global warming in the U.S., we need toreform coal mining in the Powder River Basin,” said Jeremy Nichols, Climate andEnergy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. “This region isresponsible for more carbon dioxide than any other single activity in thenation—for the sake of our communities, our economy, and our environment, weneed to change course.”

Nearly 500,000,000 tons of coal is strip mined annually fromthe Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana, morethan any other region in the nation (see chart showing amount of coal produced by region). Coal from the region is burned in more than 200 coal-fired power plants in morethan 35 states, and is increasingly shipped overseas and burned in Asiancoal-fired power plants.

“The damage done by coal affects us all,” said Mary AnneHitt, Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “Not only do sportsmen suffer whenPowder River Basin mining ruins outdoor opportunities in Montana and Wyoming,but burning coal produces all kinds of other chemicals linked to serious healthproblems. In fact, coal pollutioncontributes to four of the five leading causes of death in the United States,and is responsible for an estimated 300,000 preventable birth defects eachyear.

“Coal is not clean and cannot be clean,” Hitt added. “If President Obama’s Administrationtruly wants to pursue clean energy, they need to leave coal in the past whereit belongs.”

Today’s lawsuit comes on the heels of Secretary Salazar’sannouncement that billions of tons of new coal will be leased in the PowderRiver Basin. The suit challenges aDepartment of Interior decision that still refuses to certify the Powder RiverBasin as a coal production region.

“If decertification of the Powder River Basin ever madesense, it certainly doesn’t anymore,” said Adam Kron, attorney for Defenders ofWildlife. “The region produces more coal than anywhere else in the U.S., makingit a major contributor to climate change. Unless Secretary Salazar and BLMacknowledge this reality, Interior truly has no vision for a clean energyfuture.”

A report prepared by WildEarth Guardians, entitled “UnderMining the Climate,”found that in the last twenty years, only three lease sales out of twenty-onehave had more than one bidder (see report). Thereport also found that coal from the Powder River Basin is a root contributorto global warming in the U.S., every year releasing 800,000,000 metric tons ofheat-trapping carbon dioxide—more than thirteen percent of the nation’stotal.

Despite the problems with decertification, the Interior Department is pushingto offer twelve new coal leases in the Powder River Basin (see table of proposed leases). These leases wouldcollectively allow mining of up to 5.8 billion tons of coal—as much coal as hasbeen mined from the region in the last 20 years. WildEarth Guardians’report found that together, these proposals threaten to release more than 9.63billion metric tons of carbon dioxide—more than the amount released every yearby 1.7 billion passenger vehicles.

Today’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for theDistrict of D.C.

Background:

• The Powder River Basin, which currently producesover 40 percent of the nation’s coal—more than any other region—was first“decertified” as a coal producing region in 1990, due to then-declining coalproduction. Since then,decertification has let Interior sidestep its standard leasing protocol, suchas large-scale lease planning and the preparation of a regional analysis of theenvironmental impacts of coal mining, most notably climate change impacts.
• Under this regime of reduced planning andanalysis, Interior acts in a reactive rather than proactive mode, allowingexisting coal companies to design their own lease boundaries that precludecompetition, and then only analyzing the environmental impacts on alease-by-lease basis.
• Since the 1990 decertification of the PowderRiver Basin, coal production increased from 184 million tons in 1990 to 495.9million tons in 2008, an increase of 170 percent and a more rapid rate ofincrease than other domestic coal production.
• In November of 2009, WildEarth Guardianspetitioned the Interior Secretary to recertify the Powder River Basin as a coalproducing region. This request wasrejected in a decision issued on January 28, 2011, which prompted today’slawsuit.