AG Bob Ferguson Sues Trump Again, This Time Over Coal

SEATTLE, WA - Attorney General Bob Ferguson said on Tuesday that he would join a multi-state lawsuit against the administration of President Donald Trump over coal mining on public land. The suit alleges that the administration is in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act because it has not studied the environmental impacts of opening up new coal leases on public land.

Ferguson filed the suit jointly with attorneys general from California, New Mexico, and New York. Ferguson is involved in the suit over the coal leases, he said in a statement, but also because more coal mining would mean an increase in potentially dangerous coal trains traveling across Washington state.

Under the Obama administration, the Department of the Interior’s Office of the Inspector General found that the Bureau of Land Management, which manages coal leases on public lands, was not getting fair-market value for coal leases. To more fairly price the leases, BLM was supposed to complete an environmental assessment of its coal holdings, which would've been completed by 2019.

In March, Trump's Department of Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, canceled that the environmental assessment. Ferguson and the other attorneys general contend that BLM cannot move forward with opening up new coal leases until it completes the assessment.

“Taxpayers deserve to have their natural resources managed responsibly,” Ferguson said in a statement. “Responsible stewardship requires an understanding of the costs and benefits of extraction, which just months ago these same agencies admitted they simply don’t have. That’s unacceptable.”

Image via Associated Press