Judge: Agency keeps ignoring environment in coal region plan

By AMY BETH HANSON
Associated Press

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A judge has rejected a federal agency’s plans for managing some public lands in the West, including a major coal mining area of Wyoming and Montana. U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris says the Bureau of Land Management failed to comply with an earlier court order requiring the agency to consider the environmental impact of mining and burning coal produced in the Powder River Basin. Morris says the management plans also failed to consider an option of limiting the expansion of coal mines or eliminating some coal deposits from leasing eligibility. Morris gave the land bureau up to a year to produce new resource management plans.