Strip Mining
The Montana Environmental Information Center, et al. sued Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in federal court for approving a 6,500-acre expansion of the Rosebud coal strip mine in Montana.
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California Water
A pistachio farm and a ranch sued a Southern California water district, a mining company and a dairy in Kern County Court, in a fight over the area’s depleted groundwater.
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House Passes Bill to Protect Land Around Grand Canyon From Mining
The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed two bills to protect a combined 1.3 million acres of land in Arizona and New Mexico from new mining and drilling operations.
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Judge Weighs Jobs, Emissions in Fight Over Coal Mine Approval
A federal judge is considering whether to let a Colorado coal mine operate as planned in January 2020 or bar operations until methane flaring equipment is approved by a federal agency and installed, a delay that could cost 365 miners their jobs ahead of the holiday season.
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Uranium Industry Asks Trump for Bailout
A plea from uranium mining companies and nuclear power plant operators for tax breaks and other federal financial boosts is going to President Donald Trump as his administration studies reviving the uranium industry in the name of national security.
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Lawsuits Pile Up Over EPA’s Green Light for Mine Near Pristine Alaskan Bay
A proposed open-pit gold and copper mine approved by the federal government faces considerable legal pushback from Alaskan environmental and fishing groups, claiming the project would taint the watershed for local wildlife, including starving the headwaters that sustain the world’s largest wild salmon run.
Read moreJudge Rejects Environmental Challenge to Minnesota Copper Mine
A federal judge in Minnesota dismissed eight environmental groups’ challenges to the construction of an open-pit copper mine that they argue will destroy protected habitat and imperil several species in the Superior National Forest.
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Renewable Energy Requires Mineral Mining Investment, Experts Tell Senators
Inescapably – and in the face of a rapidly warming planet – the transition from a fossil fuel-based world to one that relies primarily on renewable energy must also involve greater investment in the mining of rare earth minerals, experts told Congress Tuesday.
Read morePanel Appears Sympathetic to Tribal Bid to Block Sulfide Mine
Seventh Circuit judges pressed the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday to explain how the Menominee Tribe could navigate the complex intersection of federal and state law to challenge a mine’s application for a permit allowing runoff into a river that forms the border between Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
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Commercial Fishermen, Indigenous People Unite to Fight Mine in Alaska
In the sleepy and remote village of Dillingham in southwestern Alaska, there has historically been tension between the indigenous populations, who take a subsistence approach to catching salmon, and commercial fishermen, who take in half a billion annually by trawling one of the world’s most productive fisheries at Bristol Bay.
Read moreHiking and Mining Battle for Supremacy at Shrunken National Monument
Rabbitbrush bloomed in abundance, casting a soft yellow sheen that extended out from both sides of the desert roadway. To the north, the carpet of wildflowers was broken only by distant hills along the horizon that wall in the Paria River Valley. The super bloom gave testament to the glut of precipitation that fell in Utah’s high desert this past winter.
Read moreMine Spill
Nearly 300 people, most of them Navajo, demand damages in a federal complaint against Weston Solutions, Gold King Mines, the United States and others from the Aug. 5, 2015, spill of toxic water from the Gold King Mine in New Mexico.
Read moreJudge Blocks Planned Copper Mine in Southern Arizona
A federal judge blocked a controversial plan for a copper mine south of Tucson, Arizona, halting a decade-long process for a Canadian company that hopes to extract copper from a valuable deposit in the Santa Rita Mountains.
Read moreEPA Dodges Suit Over Proposed Mining Regulation
After the Trump administration gave hardrock-mining companies a pass on proving their financial ability to tackle cleanup costs in the event of a spill, the D.C. Circuit shot down a challenge Friday to force the regulatory change.
Read moreEnvironment
Wildearth Guardians brought a federal complaint over a 1,720-acre expansion of the nearly 20,000-acre West Elk Coal Mine on the Western Slope — 13,000 acres of it in national forest — into the previously undisturbed Sunset Roadless Area.
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