"Forest Service Sticks Up for Coal Mining on Roadless Lands"

"The U.S. Forest Service announced it will try to reinstate the exemption to Colorado’s roadless rule that allows coal mines to build roads in protected areas of Western Colorado.  The exemption was struck down last summer by a federal court because the government failed to assess the impact of that future coal mining on climate change.

In his September order, District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson  also stopped the expansion of Arch Coal’s West Elk Mine into the Sunset Roadless Area of the Gunnison National Forest because the federal government had failed to take a “hard look” at potential contributions to climate change as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

Brooke’s ruling was the first to require the government to calculate climate impacts when it approves extraction of fossil fuels from federal lands, as HCN.org reported."

Elizabeth Shogren reports for High Country News April 8, 2015.