Falkirk Mining Co. v. U.S. Department of the Interior

The defendants reported that they had determined that an environmental assessment (EA) might be sufficient to discharge their obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act and that the Bureau of Land Management had completed a draft EA that it intended to make available by June 12, 2025.

A coal mining company that submitted an application for an emergency coal lease sale in 2019 filed a lawsuit in federal district court in North Dakota to compel federal defendants to complete their environmental review for the lease application. The company alleged that federal defendants had told the company that the environmental assessment for its application could not move forward because the impact on greenhouse gases could not be analyzed because “no test currently exists to determine whether leasing the federal coal … will have a significant impact on global carbon dioxide emissions.” The company described the federal inaction as “inexcusably part of ‘what appears to be … a de facto moratorium’ concerning federal coal leasing.” The complaint asserted violations of the Mineral Leasing Act, the Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970, NEPA, and the Administrative Procedure Act.