The Department of Interior today announced the approval of an approximately 50-million-ton expansion of the notorious Bull Mountains Underground Coal Mine near Roundup, Montana. The Trump administration approved the expansion without a draft environmental impact statement or the opportunity for public comment on a draft, citing the so-called national energy emergency, despite the fact that coal from the mine will be exported to foreign markets, mostly Japan and South Korea.
Signal Peak’s Bull Mountains Mine is one of the most notorious mining operations in the country. A 2023 New York Times exposé detailed the corruption and criminal history surrounding Signal Peak. Along with impacts to local ranchers, the story reveals embezzlement, a fake kidnapping, bribery, cocaine trafficking, firearms violations, past links to Vladimir Putin, and worker safety and environmental infringements connected to the mine.
“The Trump administration will have a very difficult time in federal court explaining how expediting approval for expanding operations at a coal mine that exports 98% of its product falls under an extremely specific domestic energy emergency declaration,” said Melissa Hornbein, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “The energy emergency declaration, preposterous on its face, only ever served as an abuse of the federal government to enrich fossil fuel barons. Using it to expand the Bull Mountains coal mine makes that explicit.”
“We’ve been waiting on this analysis for 16 years. However, we are disturbed that this decision relies on a falsely concocted ‘national energy emergency’ executive order to silence the rural, working people whose land, water, and livelihoods will continue to be threatened by mining activity with minimal oversight,” said Pat Thiele, vice-chair of the Bull Mountain Land Alliance and a Roundup resident who lives just outside the mine. “This continues a disturbing trend of asserting illegal policies to further enrich wealthy energy corporations and their billionaire owners while throwing rural people under the waste pile. Serious damage to our water has been well documented, but little to no action has been taken to address the issue. Why does this criminally convicted corporation get special treatment while folks simply trying to find solutions get muzzled without any opportunity to comment on this decision? And how is coal that will be shipped to Asia part of a ‘national energy emergency’? This fraudulent assertion is a pretext to deny Americans’ rights not just here in Montana, but across the entire country.”
“It’s utter hogwash that we have to sacrifice the climate, water resources, wildlife and area ranching operations in order to send coal overseas to be burned by foreign countries,” said Anne Hedges, executive director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. “Signal Peak has thumbed its nose at state and federal laws for decades. Now the Trump administration is rewarding these bad actors with a free pass without considering the harm to ranchers’ livelihoods, wildlife that depend on vanishing area water resources, or the devastation that will result from making the climate crisis even worse. There is no excuse for this type of lawlessness and there is certainly no national energy emergency being alleviated.”
“This is yet another disastrous decision by an administration that does not respect the rule of law,” said Shiloh Hernandez, senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies Office. “Issuing this decision pursuant to the Department of Interior’s emergency procedures – and cutting out the public in the process – is a farce. There is no energy emergency in the U.S. For Interior to go a step further here and claim that its so-called emergency mandates approval of a massive coal export project is absurd and an insult to impacted communities. This is a mine with an unmatched history of corruption and harm. Allowing it to expand will inflict further harm on the residents of the Bull Mountains and deepen the climate crisis.”
In 2023, a federal judge halted the mining of federal coal at the Bull Mountains Mine pending a thorough analysis of the mine’s impacts on ranchers, vital water sources, and the climate. In originally approving the expansion of the mine, the first Trump administration largely ignored these impacts. Today’s decision again fails to include an adequate environmental analysis with the opportunity for public comment.
Signal Peak has destroyed precious water resources above the mine and has attempted to force local ranchers out of the Bull Mountains. Ranchers and wildlife in the Bull Mountains depend entirely on the 0.1% of the area that contains springs, wells, and ponds. Recent research shows that the mine cannot replace even 1% of the water that the mine is draining from the Bull Mountains. Surface subsidence (cave-ins) from the underground mine has also torn cracks and crevasses through the Bull Mountains, causing springs and wells to go dry and imperiling all who use the area. Additionally, in an admitted effort to evade reclamation obligations, Signal Peak has canceled ranchers’ leases and harassed ranchers to the extent that some have abandoned ranching in the area.
Contacts:
Melissa Hornbein, Western Environmental Law Center, 406-708-3058, gro.w1749424658alnre1749424658tsew@1749424658niebn1749424658roh1749424658
Perry Wheeler, Earthjustice, 202-792-6211, gro.e1749424658citsu1749424658jhtra1749424658e@rel1749424658eehwp1749424658
Anne Hedges, Montana Environmental Information Center, 406-461-9546, gro.c1749424658iem@s1749424658egdeh1749424658a1749424658
Dustin Ogdin, Northern Plains Resource Council/Bull Mountain Land Alliance, 406-248-1154, gro.s1749424658nialp1749424658nreht1749424658ron@n1749424658itsud1749424658
English 
Español de México 