Senators call on feds to lift coal-lease moratorium on federal land

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) was one of nine Western senators who recently asked Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to remove the freeze on federal coal leasing for the rest of the Obama administration’s term in office.

The group came together July 14 and heavily condemned, in a letter to Jewell, Interior’s dependence  on a report published by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. The senators said the report relied too heavily on a flawed Bureau of Land Management (BLM) assessment of the coal program, in the form of a   Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), and said he suspected that the fix was in from the start.

“The Council of Economic Advisers’ report has effectively turned BLM’s review of the federal coal program into a pre-baked cake,” the letter said. “The council is an arm of the Executive Office of the President. Its chairman serves as the president’s chief economist, is a member of the Cabinet and plays a lead role in setting administration policy. Its report shows that the White House has already decided that the federal coal program does not provide a fair return to the public or adequately account for externalities, and to increase coal-royalty payments. To ensure the PEIS does not justify decisions already made, we ask that you immediately suspend development of the PEIS and the leasing moratorium for the remainder of the administration. A failure to do so will only make the PEIS and decisions purportedly based on it vulnerable to legal challenges.”

The Colorado Mining Association thanked Gardner and the other eight senators for their support of rural communities and for cost-effective energy.