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Recent Projects

Viewing recent projects in Natural Resources
  • Comments to Interior on San Juan Mine Lease Extension DEIS (New Mexico)

    The Department of the Interior is proposing to extend leasing and operations at New Mexico’s San Juan mine by 15 years, producing up to 53 million additional tons of coal that will release 97.5 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions when combusted. In our comments to Interior on its draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for the mine’s lease extension, we criticize Interior’s failure to fully account for the climate effects related to the project by monetizing the damage these emissions will cause. This refusal leaves the public and decisionmakers in the dark about the climate effects of the project, and is arbitrary given that the agency relies on the project’s monetized benefits to justify its action.

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  • Brief to SCOTUS on Economic Impact of Conservation Designations

    We recently filed, in a case before the Supreme Court, a brief on the role of ancillary and unquantified benefits in cost-benefit analysis for environmental policy. The Fish and Wildlife Service, in declaring critical habitat designation areas for the dusky gopher frog, decided to not exclude some private land from the designation after qualitatively assessing the direct and indirect costs and benefits of the designation.

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  • Brief on Repeal of Interior’s Valuation Rule

    In 2016, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) issued the Consolidated Federal Oil & Gas and Federal & Indian Coal Valuation Reform (Valuation Rule). The Valuation Rule sought to ensure that states and the federal government receive the full value of royalties due under the law for oil, gas, and coal extracted from public land. In 2017, ONRR abruptly reversed course and repealed the rule. State attorneys general have now sued ONRR over the repeal and filed a motion for summary judgment. In our brief supporting the plaintiffs, we argue that ONRR did not provide a reasoned explanation for repealing the Valuation Rule, both because ONRR fails to accurately assess the repeal’s economic impact and because ONRR fails to provide a reasoned explanation for its abrupt change in course.

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  • Comments to Interior’s Royalty Policy Committee

    Our policy director, Jayni Hein, published a new op-ed in U.S. News & World Report on the Interior Department’s failure to protect the public interest in fossil fuel leasing decisions. In addition, she submitted the op-ed as public comments to Interior’s Royalty Policy Committee and gave verbal remarks at its meeting on June 6, 2018. Hein argues that Interior is required by law to earn “fair market value” for the use and development of public natural resources, and that providing royalty rate reductions and other undue concessions would inappropriately transfer public revenue to fossil fuel industry stakeholders.

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  • Comments to BOEM on Offshore Wind Program

    The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is responsible for leasing offshore areas for energy development, including areas for wind energy. The agency has so far awarded 13 commercial offshore wind leases, totaling about 17 GW of capacity. In response to its request for feedback on the future of its offshore wind program for the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, our comments to BOEM suggest steps toward developing a robust offshore wind program that will deliver benefits to the public for decades to come.

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  • Brief on the Clean Water Rule’s “Applicability Date”

    The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corp of Engineers were sued for suspending implementation of the Clean Water Rule through the addition of an “applicability date” to the Clean Water Rule. Our brief to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in that case argues that the court should vacate the Suspension Rule because the agencies improperly ignored the forgone benefits of suspending the Clean Water Rule.

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  • Comments to EPA on Coal Combustion Residuals Rule

    In 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established minimum criteria for the safe disposal of coal combustion residuals. At the time, EPA projected that the new rule would yield substantial health and environmental benefits. EPA now proposes to weaken the requirements of the 2015 rule but insists that doing so “will not change risks to human health and the environment” and thus will have no effect on the projected benefits of the 2015 rule. Our comments explain why EPA cannot reasonably assume that its proposed changes will have no effect on the 2015 rule’s projected benefits.

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  • Comments to OSMRE on Failure to Use the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases in a Federal Mining Plan

    We recently submitted comments to Office of Surfacing Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) on its environmental assessment (EA) on modifying the federal mining plan for Bull Mountains Mine No. 1 in Montana. The EA evaluates a proposal to extend operations at an existing mine by nine years, which would produce an extra 86.7 million tons of coal. While the EA quantifies the tons of greenhouse gas emissions related to the project, OSM refused to use the social cost of greenhouse gases metric to monetize the climate effects of these emissions. Our comments explain why the agency’s refusal is arbitrary and unlawful in light of a growing body of case law, which holds that failure to monetize a project’s costs is impermissible if an agency justifies an action based on the project’s monetized benefits. Our comments also explain why the social cost of greenhouse gases metric is appropriate for projects of this scale, why the metric’s use is not limited to rulemakings, and how failing to adequately account for the project’s climate effects is a violation of NEPA.

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  • Brief to Forest Service on Expansion of Colorado’s West Elk Coal Mine

    The U.S. Forest Service continues to ignore climate damages in its final approval of a coal mine expansion in Colorado, despite a court ruling that asked the Forest Service to disclose the effects of greenhouse gas emissions from the expansion. In its final environmental impact statement (EIS) on the project, Forest Service quantifies how much the expansion will increase greenhouse gases emissions but only gives a generic description of climate change and its effects. By not quantifying and monetizing the effects of this increase in emissions, the EIS obscures information necessary for the public to appreciate how the expansion will result in hundreds of millions of dollars in climate damages. Our brief to the District Court of Colorado argues that Forest Service’s failure to monetize climate impacts was arbitrary and is still in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

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  • Federal Lands and Fossil Fuels: Maximizing Social Welfare in Federal Energy Leasing Cover

    Federal Lands and Fossil Fuels: Maximizing Social Welfare in Federal Energy Leasing

    Published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review.

    The Department of the Interior is tasked with managing the nation’s mineral resources and must earn a “fair market value” for the use of federal lands and resources. But in recent years, Interior’s coal, oil, and natural gas leasing programs have been criticized for failing to keep pace with developments in modern technology, shortchanging taxpayers, and failing to adequately account for climate change and other environmental effects. This article, published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, suggests a rational path forward for federal fossil fuel leasing. Just as a private company would seek to maximize net revenue in its operations, Interior should seek to manage its program to provide maximum net benefits to the public, to whom public resources belong. This includes accounting for all of the costs and benefits of leasing—including environmental and social costs—and adjusting the fiscal terms of its fossil fuel leases to recoup unmitigated externality costs.

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