(CN) - Conservation groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to block a major coal mine expansion in Montana, accusing federal regulators of fast-tracking the approval despite longstanding warnings that mining would drain local aquifers.
"This mine has absolutely devastated the water quality and quantity in the Bull Mountains, all so that we can ship coal overseas," Derf Johnson, deputy director of one of the plaintiff groups, Montana Environmental Information Center, said in a statement.
The U.S. Office of Surface Mining approved an approximately 50 million-ton expansion of the Bull Mountains Coal Mine in June to advance President Donald Trump's "energy emergency" directives. The approval authorized the mine operator, Signal Peak Energy, to recover around 22.8 million tons of federal coal and 34.5 million tons of adjacent nonfederal coal and expand the life of the mine by up to nine years.
A coalition of conservation groups - the Montana Environmental Information Center, the Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians - accuse the federal government of recklessly approving the expansion without public input and ignoring the environmental impact of the action.
"This mine has not been a good neighbor to us here in the Bulls," Tom Baratta, a landowner in the Bull Mountains and member of the plaintiff organizations, said in a statement. "We see the damage to the land and local water sources caused by mining. We breathe the air downwind of a toxic waste pile. We are losing habitat for wildlife and game. Ranchers and property owners are pushed off for cheap."
The Office of Surface Mining approved the expansion without publishing a draft environmental impact statement and without accepting any public input beyond comments at the scoping stage that the office didn't respond to, the groups say.
"Relying on a supposed energy emergency that has no basis in reality, OSM's actions make a mockery of the required environmental review process," the groups write in the complaint.
The Bull Mountains Mine is around 30 miles north of Billings in central Montana. It was proposed in the 1980s, and state regulators approved the operation in 1993. The controversial mine was the subject of a 2023 New York Times article detailing worker safety violations, environmental infractions, and tracing Signal Peak's history with embezzlement, fake kidnappings and past ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The groups say the mine has devastated the ecology and ranching community of the range and accuse the federal government of ignoring decades' worth of warnings about how the mine will dewater the aquifers on the mountain.
"It was well known by both miners and regulators that a longwall mine would dewater the Bull Mountains, driving generational ranching families off their land to enrich three out-of-state corporations sending coal overseas," Pat Thiele, a landowner in the Bull Mountains and member of the plaintiff organizations, said in a statement. "Nobody with any authority cares."
The groups point to a study from one of the Office of Surface Mining's own hydrologists who concluded that longwall mining would cause "adverse and irreversible effects on the hydrologic system and water supply [that] could not be mitigated if mining were to take place."
The groups also accuse Trump of fabricating a domestic energy emergency despite record-high fossil fuel production and argue that, even if there were one, expanded operations at the mine wouldn't address it. Since Signal Peak took over operations in 2008, the majority of coal produced at the mine has been exported to Japan and South Korea, the groups claim.
"The Trump administration rubber-stamped an expansion for a mine with an alarming history," Shiloh Hernandez, senior attorney with Earthjustice's Northern Rockies Office, said in a statement. "The sham energy emergency that this approval was based on does not exist, and even if it did, shipping coal overseas wouldn't help to address it."
The groups accuse the agency of violating both the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. They are asking the court to block the expansion and force the agency to comply with the environmental law before approving a new mining plan.
"When a mine has a dangerous history of safety and environmental violations, the last thing regulators should do is rush approval behind closed doors," Rebecca Sobel, climate and health director for WildEarth Guardians, said in a statement. "NEPA requires transparency, science and public participation, especially when communities' land and water are on the line."
The Department of the Interior, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and both agencies' associated heads are named defendants.
The Department of the Interior declined to comment on pending litigation.
Source: Courthouse News Service
