The 117-million-ton expansion was approved by the Obama administration and would have extended the operating life of the mine for another six and a half years.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) A judge says U.S officials downplayed climate change impacts and other environmental costs from the expansion of a massive coal mine near the Montana-Wyoming border, in a case that could show how far the Biden administration is willing to go to unwind his predecessors' decisions.
BILLINGS, Mont. A judge says U.S officials downplayed climate change impacts and other environmental costs from the expansion of a massive coal mine near the Montana-Wyoming border, in a case that could show how far the Biden administration is willing to go to unwind its predecessors’ decisions.
Judge orders US officials to weigh coal mine s climate costs
Matthew Brown
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FILE - In this April 4, 2013, file photo, a mechanized shovel loads a haul truck with coal at the Spring Creek coal mine near Decker, Mont. A judge says U.S officials downplayed the climate change impacts and other environmental costs from the expansion of a massive coal mine near the Montana-Wyoming border, in a case that could show how far the Biden administration is willing to go to unwind his predecessors decisions. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File) (Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
BILLINGS, Mont. – A judge says U.S officials downplayed climate change impacts and other environmental costs from the expansion of a massive coal mine near the Montana-Wyoming border, in a case that could test how far the Biden administration is willing to go to unwind its predecessors decisions.
High-voltage electrical lines run from coal-fired generating plants in Colstrip, Montana. (Photo: David Reese)
(CN) A Montana judge on Wednesday ruled that the federal government ignored the health, air pollution and greenhouse-gas consequences of hauling and burning more coal from Montana’s largest coal mine.
In a rebuke of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, Judge Susan Watters ruled the agency failed to disclose the full impacts of expanding southeastern Montana’s Spring Creek mine, the largest in the state.
Watters said the agency ignored federal law by failing to address the impacts of trains hauling coal from the mine, the air pollution consequences of burning more coal from the mine, and the climate costs of greenhouse gas emissions that would result from more coal mining and burning. Her ruling was the latest in a series of court rulings that have rejected federal fossil fuel programs.