BLM denies request to change coal leasing process

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has denied a petition by environmental groups to change its process for selling access to the nation's most productive coal deposits. Since 1990, the government has allowed the coal industry to nominate deposits it wishes to mine in the Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana. Such deposits typically are located next to existing strip mines in the basin. At auction, the leases seldom attract more than one bidder apiece — the company that already has been mining next to the leases. In 2009, the groups WildEarth Guardians and the Sierra Club asked the BLM to change the policy so the BLM alone would decide which coal reserves to sell. Such a change would help create more competition for the leases while improving oversight of coal's contribution to climate change, the groups said...more