DOI Releases Scoping Report On Coal Leasing Reforms

On January 11, 2017, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) within the Department of the Interior released a scoping report analyzing a wide range of proposed reforms to the federal coal leasing program, administered by the BLM. The scoping report is an initial step in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process for reforming leasing and management of the 475,000 acres of existing coal leases across 10 states, with an estimated 7.4 billion tons of recoverable coal. The last such comprehensive review was in the mid-1980s, and most of the existing regulations were promulgated in the late 1970s, with little change since. The recently released report lays the groundwork for a future programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) that will evaluate a variety of potential reforms to the program. It will make recommendations as to which of those reforms would best meet the BLM's stated goal to improve and modernize the program to allow for orderly development