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

Denver, CO—WildEarth Guardians today confronted a proposal by President Trump to allow the western U.S.’s largest electric utility, PacifiCorp, to expand the company’s Jim Bridger coal mine in southwestern Wyoming.

“There is no question that this is about subsidizing PacifiCorp’s coal mining by sacrificing our public lands, our climate, and our clean energy future,” said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ Climate and Energy Program Director. “This isn’t about promoting energy, it’s about promoting coal industry greed and we’re not going to stand for it.”

In comments, Guardians called on the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining to deny PacifiCorp’s request to be able to mine 4.5 million tons of publicly owned coal to expand the company’s Jim Bridger mine.

Located east of Rock Springs, Wyoming, the Jim Bridger mine fuels the Jim Bridger power plant, which is both the largest coal-fired power plant in Wyoming and largest source of carbon emissions in the state.

The co-owner of the Jim Bridger power plant, Idaho Power, recently announced its desire to shutter half of the plant’s four generating units.

In its comments, Guardians called on the Office of Surface Mining to reject expanded mining, calling out the agency for short cutting its environmental scrutiny of the Jim Bridger mine and power plant, for failing to ensure protection of clean air and water, and for failing to honestly disclose the climate impacts of more coal mining and more coal burning.

“The coal industry is dying, yet President Trump and his Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, continue to want to force-feed companies like PacifiCorp more publicly owned coal,” said Nichols. “Coupled with their complete denial of climate change, this is simply a corrupt disaster waiting to unfold.”

“It is outrageous that the Trump Administration can ignore climate change impacts and sacrifice more public land to burn more fossil fuels,” added Nichols. “It’s time the federal government did its job instead of turning a blind eye to the impacts of coal.”

WildEarth Guardians also challenged the legal validity of authorizing more mining. By law, PacifiCorp can only mine publicly owned coal that it has leased from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. However, a Bureau of Land Management official with authority to do so did not approve the underlying lease. WildEarth Guardians has already overturned illegally approved coal leases at the Jim Bridger mine.

A decision is expected from the U.S. Office of Surface Mining in late 2017 or early 2018.