PRESIDENT RECONSIDERS MONUMENT MINING MORATORIA
rancher who worries that more mining would foul a supply that generations of ranchers have relied upon.
During the Obama administration, the Interior Department seized on the issue of climate change and temporarily banned new coal leases on public lands as it examined the consequences for the environment. The Obama administration also drew protests from major mining companies by ordering them to pay higher royalties to the government.
President Donald Trump, along with questioning climate change, has moved quickly to wipe out those measures with the support of coal companies and other commercial interests. Separately, Trump’s Interior Department is drawing up plans to reduce wilderness and historic areas that are now protected as national monuments, creating even more opportunities for profit.
Richard Reavey, the head of government relations for Cloud Peak Energy, which operates a strip mine here that sends coal to the Midwest and increasingly to coal-burning power plants in Asia, said Trump’s change of course was meant to correct wrongs of the past.
Even with the moves so far, the prospect of coal companies operating in a big way on federal land — and for any major job growth — is dim, in part because environmentalists have blocked construction of a coal export terminal, and there is limited capacity at the port the companies use in Vancouver.
Competition from other global suppliers offering coal to Asian power plants is also intense. But at least for now, coal production and exports are rising in the Powder River Basin after a major decline last year.
Opponents of the Trump administration’s direction have gone to court. New Mexico and California sued in April to undo the rollback in royalties that coal mines pay, while ranchers like Hayes and the Cheyenne tribe joined a lawsuit in March challenging the repeal of a moratorium on federal coal leasing.
“If we hand over control of these lands to a narrow range of special interests, we lose an iconic part of the country — and the West’s identity,” said Chris Saeger, executive director of the Montana-based environmental group Western Values Project, referring to coal mining and oil and gas drilling that the Interior Department is moving to rapidly expand.
Trump’s point man is Ryan Zinke, a native Montanan who rode a horse to work on his first day as head of the Interior Department. A former Republican congressmand and member of the Navy SEALS and, Zinke oversees the national park system, as well as the Bureau of Land Management, which controls 250 million acres nationwide, parts of which are used to produce oil, gas, coal, lumber and hay.
In late June, Zinke visited Whitefish, Mont., to attend a meeting of Western governors, where he vowed to find a balance between extracting commodities from federal lands and protecting them.
“Our greatest treasures are public lands,” Zinke said in a speech. “It is not a partisan issue. It is an American issue.”
Afterward, protesters from the Sierra Club and other groups held a rally in the town square against the actions taken by Zinke during his first months on the job, chanting “Shame!” and “Liar!” and carrying signs opposing his policies.
Finishing the job
In February, even before the Senate confirmed Zinke to his new post, Reavey of Cloud Peak was meeting at the Interior Department headquarters in Washington with Trump’s political appointees. Among them was Kathy Benedetto, who was temporarily overseeing the division in charge of coal leases.
“We made clear that we thought this rule was bad and they had an opportunity to stop this process from going forward,” he said of the change in royalty payments.
Cloud Peak and other mining industry giants also put their objections in writing, asking the department to delay the rule until the industry’s lawsuit was resolved. Within days, they got their wish. The agency, reversing its position during the Obama presidency, froze the rule and told Cloud Peak and other industry lawyers that they had “raised legitimate questions.”
By late March, after Zinke was sworn in, the rollback continued. Zinke repealed Jewell’s moratorium on new coal leases, and canceled further work on the study she had ordered. The first part — 1,378 pages examining 306 active federal coal leases — had been issued in January.
“Costly and unnecessary,” Zinke said in announcing that the study was, in essence, being thrown in the trash.
The decisions caused an uproar among Democrats in Washington, but the tensions they unleashed were also on display this summer at an extreme sporting event on the Crow Indian reservation, not far from the coal mines here in Decker.
Cloud Peak is a sponsor of the event. In 2013, the Crow had signed an agreement giving the company the right to extract up to 1.4 billion tons of coal on the tribe’s lands. The industry-friendly approach of the Trump administration had leaders feeling optimistic that Cloud Peak would move forward, as the project still needs many permits from the federal government.
The tribe estimates the Cloud Peak operations could generate $10 million in payments for a community where the unemployment rate in June was 19.4 percent, five times the state average. “Coal, for us, is the ticket to prosperity,” said Shawn Backbone, the tribe’s vice secretary, who attended the warrior competition. “We are rich in coal reserves. But we are cash poor.”
But the Cheyenne are not happy. They have historically opposed coal mining and worry Cloud Peak’s expansion would irrevocably damage the environment. They have joined the lawsuit by the nearby rancher, Hayes, challenging the decision to lift the moratorium on new coal leases.
“We are wealthy in life here,” said Donna Fisher, a Cheyenne who lives along the Tongue River and who attended the warrior competition with her grandson. “We don’t have money. But we have land, water and air. Snuff that out and we are gone.”
Friends in high places
As he walked on stage at the governor’s gathering in Whitefish, Zinke exuded confidence. The United States, he argued, can and should expand energy production from its federal lands, with money earned from leases going toward repairs to roads and bridges, and at national parks.
“As Interior secretary, I am looking at both sides of our balance sheet,” Zinke said. “There is a consequence of not using some of our public land for the creation of wealth and jobs.”
Conrad Anker, a mountaineer and author, took the stage after Zinke. He said in an interview that organizers had instructed him not to mention climate change, or its effect on the glaciers at Glacier National Park. According to a federal study, the glaciers have lost as much as 85 percent of their mass over the past 50 years.
There was no such restraint on the nearby town square, where protesters flashed signs with slogans like “Zinke Sells Soul to Big Oil” and “What Would Teddy Do?” — a reference to Zinke’s statements that he admired President Theodore Roosevelt, a conservationist who helped set aside millions of acres as public land.