DOI could reverse trajectory of coal leasing in Powder River Basin
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The Trump administration is looking to amend resource management plans which could reopen coal mining in the Powder River Basin, just a year after the Biden administration ended coal leasing there.
Shiloh Hernandez, staff attorney in the Northern Rockies Office for the nonprofit law organization Earthjustice, said the move ignores the reality coal is no longer economically competitive.
"I think it's in some ways a false promise to the region that has long depended on coal mining as an economic driver that these lines are somehow going to continue forever," Hernandez contended. "That's not responsible. It's reckless and it's unbalanced."
The change dovetails with energy policies passed in the Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” including reduced royalty rates and streamlined lease reviews for coal mining, as well as a mandate to make 4 million additional acres of public lands available for leasing. The public comment period for the amendments closes August 7.
Hernandez argued the current resource management plans, which gradually decrease coal mining over the next 15 years, balance local interests with the negative environmental impacts of mining.
"It's our hope that the administration will heed the science and the economics that this effort to prop up continued strip mining of coal in the Powder River Basin does not promise any long term benefit to the communities or the country," Hernandez explained.
At the end of 2024, 138 million tons of coal were already stockpiled at U.S. power plants, according to a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which also indicates declining demand.
