Photo by iStockphoto.com/RobertWaltman
The Sunset Roadless Area is home to beaver and black bear, elk and goshawk, and provides habitat for the imperiled lynx. Arch Coal's proposal to scrape more than 6 miles of roads and nearly 50 drilling pads would degrade this vibrant forest.
A federal judge blocked the 2,000-acre expansion of a coal mine in the wildlands of Colorado’s Gunnison National Forest today, ordering the Trump administration to consider limiting methane emissions and address potential harm to water and fish.
In today’s ruling U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson said the Interior Department violated federal law by failing to consider an alternative that would require flaring methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and by ignoring new information about the potential effects to perennial streams in the project area. The mining plan approved 8.4 miles of new roads and 43 new methane venting wells, anticipated to release almost 12 million tons of methane into the atmosphere. Read the full press release.