Groups Sue Interior over Climate Impacts of Coal Leasing Program

Last week, environmental groups Friends of the Earth and the Western Organization of Resource Councils filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) failure to consider the harmful climate effects of the federal coal program.  The BLM is managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior and is responsible for coal leasing on approximately 570 million acres.

The lawsuit requires the BLM to re-examine its federal coal program in light of developments regarding the ramifications of burning coal and increased greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).  The BLM issued a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) for the federal coal program in 1975, which detailed the environmental consequences of federal coal leasing.

This review, however, was never updated to account for almost three decades of new information on climate change and GHG emissions from burning coal that has emerged since the PEIS was initially drafted.  Under the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, the agency is required to consider changed circumstances and new information that affects its prior environmental analysis.

The challenge is an effort by environmental groups to confront the glaring inconsistency between the President’s efforts to combat climate change and BLM’s continued efforts to lease more federal coal.

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