BY JOBY WARRICK
The Obama administration on Friday ordered a moratorium on new leases for coal mined from federal lands as part of a sweeping review of the government’s management of vast amounts of taxpayer-owned coal throughout the West.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the temporary halt, saying it was time for a re-examination of the decades-old coal-leasing program, from health and environmental impacts to whether U.S. citizens are getting a fair return for the hundreds of millions of tons of government-owned coal that are mined and sold each year...