The Bureau of Land Management rejected a mining company’s bid to acquire 167 million tons of coal on public lands in Montana for just $0.001 per ton.
The company, Navajo Transitional Energy Co., was the only one to bid on the sale, which would have been the largest federal coal sale in more than a decade. As a result of the failed sale, the BLM postponed a lease sale in the Wyoming portion of the Powder River Basin, which was scheduled to take place this week.
This happened just a week after Congress used the Congressional Review Act to overturn a Biden-era resource management plan that would have ended new coal leasing on public lands in Montana’s portion of the Powder River Basin.
Energy companies aren’t the only ones pushing back on President Donald Trump’s efforts to boost America’s coal industry. On Tuesday, dozens of miners and their families gathered outside the Labor Department building to urge the Trump administration to enforce protections for black lung disease, an incurable illness caused by inhaling coal and silica dust.
“The companies might be getting a handout, but the miners ain’t getting none,” said Gary Hairston, 71, a retired coal miner and president of the National Black Lung Association. Hairston has been living with black lung disease since he was in his 40s.
Quick hits
Out of land? The role of federal public lands in the West‘s housing crisis
Why less land has burned in much of the West this year
BLM schedules Colorado oil and gas lease sale
The best public lands destinations you’ve never heard of: Volume 3
Coal pollution rose in last shutdown as EPA inspections stopped
Quannah ChasingHorse isn’t slowing down on fighting for Indigenous rights
App helps solve access question for some of Colorado’s 704,000 acres of inaccessible public lands
Opinion: Public lands define the Land of Enchantment
Quote of the day
That’s what gives me hope, seeing that our future leaders are going to be strong and knowledgeable, and will make decisions that will benefit everyone, not just themselves.”
—Quannah ChasingHorse, Indigenous activist, Outside
Picture This
(Featured image: Coal trains transport coal from the Powder River Basin. Photo by the Center for Land Use Interpretation)