WildEarth Guardians

Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Guardians Calls on Court to Overturn San Juan Coal Mining in New Mexico

Closed Door Mine Approval Fueling Climate Change, Threatening Clean Air in Southwest
Contact: Jeremy Nichols (303) 437-7663

Denver—WildEarth Guardians today called on a federal court to protect clean air and the climate in New Mexico and overturn the U.S. Interior Department’s illegal approval of an expansion of the San Juan coal mine.

“The Interior Department is rubberstamping more coal mining with no public notice and no consideration of our clean air or our climate,” said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ Climate and Energy Program Director.  “Not only does mining take a tremendous toll on our western landscape, it’s fueling coal-fired power plants that are spewing out millions of tons of carbon and other toxic air pollution.”

In an opening brief filed today, Guardians exposed how the Interior Department and the U.S. Office of Surface Mining approved behind closed doors an expansion of the San Juan coal mine without analyzing the impacts to clean air or addressing the impacts of coal combustion.

The San Juan coal mine fuels the nearby 1,848-megawatt San Juan Generating Station west of Farmington, New Mexico.  The power plant is now the largest coal-fired power plant in New Mexico.  Annually, its four smokestacks spew more than 16,000 tons of smog and haze-forming nitrogen oxide gases, equal to the amount released every year from 1.7 million passenger vehicles.

The power plant, which is primarily owned and operated by Public Service Company of New Mexico, or PNM, also releases more than 12 million tons of carbon pollution every year, making it currently the largest single sources of greenhouse gases in New Mexico.

In 2008, the Office of Surface Mining Interior Department approved an expansion of the San Juan coal mine.  No public notice of this decision was provided, even though they green-lighted the mining of more than 36 million tons of publicly owned coal from more than 4,400 acres.

In approving the mine expansion, the agencies relied on environmental reviews prepared in the mid-1990’s, and asserted that there would be “no significant” impacts to human health or the environment.  Neither decision addressed or even acknowledged the current impacts of the San Juan Generating Station, including its air pollution impacts.

“The Interior Department continues to put the coal industry above all else,” said Nichols.  “Here, not only was the public kept in the dark, but we were denied basic information on the environmental impacts of mining and the inevitable impacts of coal burning.”

The San Juan Generating Station has been the subject of intense scrutiny over its climate and clean air impacts for several years now.  Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a plan that would assure the retirement of half of he power plant by the end of 2017.  However, the plant’s primary owner, PNM, is locking in plans to keep the remaining half—more than 900-megawatts- in operation for decades.

“PNM’s push to keep burning coal even as the need to curtail carbon pollution becomes more urgent is simply reprehensible,” said Nichols.  “It’s time to expose the real cost of coal, from the mine to the smokestack, so we can finally move beyond fossil fuels toward clean energy.” 

Today’s opening brief called on the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico to overturn these mining approvals, not only over the failure of the Interior Department and Office of Surface Mining to provide any public notice, but also over the failure of these agencies to limit environmental impacts as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

So far, the Interior Department and Office of Surface Mining have defended their decisions, asserting they provided public notice by shelving documents at an agency library on the 34th floor of an office building in downtown Denver, and that relying on environmental reviews prepared in the mid-1990’s is appropriate.

Guardians has filed similar challenges over federal coal mining approvals in Colorado and Montana.  A ruling from the court is likely in 2015.