BY ERIN FORD
According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, around 40 percent of all coal mined in the U.S. is extracted from federal lands through lease agreements with the Department of Interior (DOI). It’s a system built on the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, and the last formal review of the program was 35 years ago, in 1982.
Last year, the Obama administration placed a moratorium on new federal coal mining leases pending a thorough review and overhaul of the program amid calls for a study of the program’s impact on climate change and concerns that taxpayers were being shortchanged by outdated royalty fees. At the time, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell stated the decades-old program needed to be re-evaluated based on modern science...