Sierra Club v. Moul

Sierra Club and Prairie Rivers Network filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Southern District of Illinois challenging the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) approval of the expansion of a coal mine in southern Illinois. The complaint alleged that TVA’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it was predicated on an erroneous interpretation of the provisions of a 2002 lease that granted rights to mine TVA coal reserves and also because the decision “contradicts TVA’s own expressed goals related to carbon emissions and statutory obligations related to environmental protection.” The plaintiffs also asserted that TVA violated the National Environmental Policy Act both because the environmental review was grounded in the allegedly erroneous construction of the lease as requiring TVA to grant the mining authorization and because the environmental review did not consider reasonably foreseeable impacts of the mining company’s continued violations of environmental law. In addition, the plaintiffs alleged that TVA did not adequately consider the impacts of potential divestment of TVA mineral rights in southern Illinois, including whether sale of the coal reserves to be burned was consistent with TVA’s decarbonization and environmental protection goals.