The federal government in the past few weeks celebrated announcements that target the Telluride area for coal mining, while canceling funding to help sustain coal mining and natural gas drilling near Farmington. If you’re confused by its priorities, you’re not alone.
The U.S. Department of Interior on Sept. 29 unveiled its plans to resuscitate the coal industry by opening up additional lands for coal mining. Congress passed its big budget bill last July by just a single vote, and part of that bill directed the Interior to make millions of acres available for coal leasing.
In Colorado, the Interior Secretary decided to target thousands of acres west of Telluride, along the San Miguel River corridor, for coal leasing. The news release carried the grandiose announcement that the Interior was “unleashing American coal power in a bold move.” Of all the places in America to boldly attempt to unleash coal mining, Telluride and the San Miguel River have to be among the most head scratching of choices.
The Interior Secretary’s choice reverses the reasonable decision by the local Bureau of Land Management office in Montrose to make the San Miguel River Special Recreation Management Area off limits to coal leasing. BLM’s plan was developed after 10 years of public outreach and in collaboration with county commissioners and other local elected officials.
The new Interior Department decision overturned that effort in a short three months, without a single minute of local engagement, and no attempt at communicating its intent to county commissioners.
It’s unlikely any coal-mining executive in their right mind will try to permit and construct a new coal mine in San Miguel County. Such an effort would run headlong into enormous public opposition, and no doubt county officials would throw every conceivable roadblock in front of it. Just the logistics alone are daunting – constructing a coal mine from scratch, trucking coal 100 miles on twisty canyon roads to a rail line, and hauling coal hundreds of miles to where?
Which highlights the performative purpose of the Interior’s announcement. It’s entirely about the Interior Secretary beating his chest to tout the dominance of coal with an utterly nonsensical proposal.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy unveiled a decision to terminate billions of dollars in what Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, gleefully called “green scams” aimed at reducing climate pollution. The cancellations were focused entirely on states that voted for Democrats in the last election.
Except here in the Four Corners region, that ham-fisted approach led to the Energy Department canceling $50 million in projects intended to provide a financial lifeline to the struggling coal and natural gas industries.
One canceled project was to fund a $6.6 million engineering design to retrofit carbon capture technology onto the creaky 60-year-old Four Corners Power Plant in an effort to keep it burning coal for another couple of decades and help keep coal mining afloat in New Mexico.
Another project involved $42.7 million to the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to turn the Four Corners into a carbon storage hub. That apparently sounded suspiciously proenvironmental to the Energy Department, enough to merit its termination, but in reality it was intended to find a new market for natural gas produced in the San Juan basin by supporting hydrogen production and carbon capture.
Both announcements, opening areas near Telluride to coal leasing while canceling carbon-capture projects near Farmington intended to benefit coal and natural gas companies, were clearly motivated by public relations. The practical effect in the Southwest though, will be to further diminish the fossil fuel industry.
Mark Pearson is Executive Director at San Juan Citizens Alliance. Reach him at mark@sanjuancitizens.org.
