US Forest Service proposes coal mining expansion in Colorado

National and local conservation groups today condemned a decision by the U.S. Forest Service to continue pressing to open national forest roadless areas in Colorado to coal mining.
In a notice filed today, the Forest Service announced it would move forward by issuing a draft environmental impact statement on the proposal to pave the way for mining. The proposal would reopen a loophole in the “roadless rule” for national forests in Colorado to enable Arch Coal — the nation’s second largest coal company — to scrape roads and well pads on nearly 20,000 acres of otherwise-protected, publicly owned national forest and wildlife habitat in Colorado’s North Fork Valley.
The loophole was thrown out by the U.S. District Court of Colorado last year because the Forest Service had failed to consider the climate change impacts of mining as much as 350 million tons of coal in the national forest. (Today’s notice reduces the estimated coal available to 173 million tons.) The Forest Service admits that reopening the loophole could result in hundreds of millions of tons of additional carbon pollution from mining and burning the coal. That carbon pollution could cost the global economy and environment billions of dollars, according to today’s notice.

North Fork Valley coal contains large amounts of methane, a gas that, over a 20-year period, is more than 80 times more powerful than CO2 as a heat-trapping gas. The one currently operating mine that would benefit from the loophole — Arch Coal’s West Elk mine, located in the North Fork Valley near Paonia — spews millions of cubic feet of methane a day into the air without attempting to capture or flare the natural gas. Reports also indicate Arch Coal is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.
The draft impact study’s release comes just a few weeks before President Obama flies to Paris to participate in a global summit on climate change, and just one week after the president rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, stating: “If we’re gonna prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re gonna have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them.”
“This massive giveaway to the coal industry undercuts the U.S.’s commitment to reducing climate pollution at a time when the world is looking to America for leadership,” said Earthjustice attorney Ted Zukoski, who represented the groups in federal court. “If there’s any place to keep fossil fuel in the ground, it’s here, where mining for dirty coal will release huge amounts of methane and destroy pristine wildlife habitat next to a wilderness area.”
“Lifting protections on our public lands to prop up bankrupt coal companies is absolutely scandalous,” said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ climate and energy program director. “The Obama administration needs to understand that Americans don’t want to shoulder the debt of Arch Coal so the company can trash our forests and our climate.”
Photo by U.S. Forest Service, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Earthjustice on behalf of WildEarth Guardians, documenting the impact of underground coal mining on forests. Photo was taken adjacent to, or perhaps just inside, the Sunset Roadless Area, Colorado.