{"id":8258,"date":"2015-05-19T06:16:30","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T11:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8258"},"modified":"2015-05-19T06:16:30","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T11:16:30","slug":"environmentalists-win-federal-lawsuit-over-colorado-coal-mines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8258","title":{"rendered":"Environmentalists Win Federal Lawsuit Over Colorado Coal Mines"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2015\/05\/18\/environmentalists-win-federal-lawsuit-over-colorado-coal-mines\" target=\"_blank\">Environmentalists Win Federal Lawsuit Over Colorado Coal Mines<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">Environmentalists won big May 8 in a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.coloradoindependent.com\/153315\/environmentalists-are-targeting-colorado-coal-successfully\" target=\"_blank\">lawsuit brought against the federal government<\/a>\u00a0over two coal mines near the northern Colorado town of\u00a0Craig.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">The nonprofit environmental group WildEarth Guardians sued the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span>\u00a0Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (<span class=\"caps\">OSM<\/span>), a bureau within the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span>Department of the Interior, over permits granted in 2007 to expand the coal mines, saying\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">OSM<\/span>\u00a0failed to seek public input or consider impacts on the environment when it approved expanding the mines. The mines are operated by Colowyo Coal Company and Trapper Mining, Inc.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/climatewest.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/05\/osm-colorado-ruling.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">May 8, 2015 ruling<\/a>, Federal District Judge R. Brooke Jackson agreed with WildEarth Guardians that\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">OSM<\/span>cited outdated documents from the 1970s in its Finding of No Significant Impact for the mine expansions, and found the agency \u201cdid not comply with its most basic\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">NEPA<\/span>\u00a0[National Environmental Policy Act] duty of providing public notice\u201d of the mining plan\u00a0revisions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The judge awarded WildEarth Guardians reasonable attorney&#8217;s fees and expenses incurred in bringing the lawsuit, and gave the two mining companies 120 days to \u201ctake a hard look at the direct and indirect environmental effects of the Colowyo mining plan revision,\u201d and \u201cprovide public notice and an opportunity for public involvement before reaching its decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If the companies fail to complete these remedial tasks within the assigned 120-day window, they face closure of the\u00a0mines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The ruling follows a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2014\/07\/03\/rejection-colorado-coal-mine-global-warming-grounds-game-changer\">similar one in\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span>\u00a0District Court in June of 2014<\/a>\u00a0in which the Court found the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service wrongly approved expansion of the West Elk coal mine in Somerset, Colorado, because the company operating the mine,\u00a0Arch Coal,\u00a0failed to consider the social and economic impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from the mining.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Environmentalists Win Federal Lawsuit Over Colorado Coal Mines Environmentalists won big May 8 in a\u00a0lawsuit brought against the federal government\u00a0over two coal mines near the northern Colorado town of\u00a0Craig. The nonprofit environmental group WildEarth Guardians sued the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM), a bureau within the\u00a0U.S.Department of the Interior, over permits granted in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[147,1043,5503,5504,1482,5507,5506,5505],"class_list":["post-8258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-coal","tag-coal-mining","tag-colorado","tag-craig","tag-mining","tag-national-environmental-policy-act","tag-nepa","tag-wildearth-guardians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8259,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258\/revisions\/8259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}