Last Thursday, the Obama Administration Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management published a notice in the Federal Register announcing publication of a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for leasing up to 49 million tons of coal at a site on DOI-BLM land just southeast of the town of Alton, UT -- about halfway between Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.
PUBLIC COMMENTS DUE AUGUST 17, 2015.
[See Federal Register notice for public meetings and hearings in Utah, and addresses to submitting comments.]
Here is the BLM website to access the just published Draft Supplemental EIS on the Alton Development lease application expansion:
http://www.blm.gov/...
The Obama Administration leasing of coal is a big source of controversy because such federal coal leasing of publicly-owned mineral resources by the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture are activities which constitute a public subsidization of coal industry operations as a result of leasing these publicly-owned mineral resources to private companies who mine these public resources.
Here is how the DOI-Bureau of Land Management Bureaucrats see things:
The BLM-managed coal leasing program encourages the development of domestic coal reserves. As a result of the leasing and subsequent mining and sale of federal coal resources, the public continues to receive a reliable domestic supply of coal for use in the electric power sector and in the industrial sector. BLM recognizes that the continued extraction of coal is a component of meeting the nation's current and future electrical energy and industrial needs. Therefore, private development of federal coal reserves is integral to the BLM coal leasing program under authority of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (MLA), as amended by the Federal Coal Leasing Act Amendments of 1976. The MLA requires that all public lands not specifically closed to leasing be open to lease for the exploration and development of mineral resources. A federal coal lease grants the lessee the exclusive right to obtain a mining permit for, and to mine coal on, the leased tract. This lease is subject to the terms of the lease, the mining permit, and applicable state and federal laws. Before a new leased tract can be mined, the lessee must have their detailed plans approved (in the permit application package [PAP] ) to conduct mining and reclamation operations. Further, a primary goal of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 is to add energy supplies from diverse sources, including domestic oil, gas, and coal, as well as hydropower and nuclear power.
The Obama Administration has not yet harmonized its greenhouse gas emission reduction goals with the promotional policies for federal coal leasing on public lands and of publicly-owned mineral resources by the Department of Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for addressing a leasing application has been published as a result of a lease application by Alton Coal Development, LLC, a mining enterprise who will then bid in a public, sealed-bid auction on a subsequent lease sale if the BLM follows through on their preferred proposed alternative as they are saying in the Draft Supplemental EIS.
Alton Coal Development, LLC is already strip mining on a nearby tract for which a prior lease sale was held. The Draft Supplemental EIS would a significant expansion of area allowable and leased for mining by about 3,581 acres (about 5.6 square miles of area).
The Draft EIS estimates the 2 million tons mined annually of the bituminous coal will emit 4.4 million metric tons per year of greenhouse gases when combusted. However, BLM's greenhouse gas emission characterization uses EPA's lowest greenhouse gas coal combustion emission factor rate for sub-bituminous coal when the 10,000 btu per pound coal is really more of a bituminous coal with a higher greenhouse gas emission per pound burned or per million BTU heat input. The actual factor for this coal could easily be greater than 25% higher than the factor used by BLM in its Draft document as shown by EPA's AP-42 emission factors for coal combustion.
I can't seem to find anything about Alton Coal Development's investors, although the coal is apparently intended for a coal-fired power plant further north in Utah.
Here is some of the coverage the locals are seeing in the newspaper from St. George, UT:
http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/...
The Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club is on the case:
https://utah.sierraclub.org/...
http://www.haltaltoncoal.com/
How Alton Coal Development does political business:
http://www.deseretnews.com/...
Sourcewatch's take on Alton Coal Development:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/...