Congress Cancels Locally Developed Land Use Plan Amendment for Powder River Basin

Photo by Jessica Plance.

Using the Congressional Review Act, Congress has now tossed aside years of public input from Wyoming ranchers, Tribes, property owners, and recreationists.

This week, Congress used the Congressional Review Act to cancel the Buffalo Field Office Resource Management Plan Amendment, a day after the House did the same. The Bureau of Land Management finalized the amendment last year after years of consultation with hundreds of local ranchers, farmers, Tribal leaders, property owners, and others in Wyoming whose livelihoods depend on responsible management of public lands and minerals in the Powder River Basin.

“Sens. Barrasso and Lummis have railed against government overreach for years, championing local control, and yet they voted to dismiss the voices of hundreds of Wyomingites who helped develop the now cancelled Buffalo RMPA,” said Lynne Huskinson, about the House vote. Huskinson is the current board chair of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, former coal miner, and resident of Gillette, Wyoming. “Rep. Hageman has sided with D.C. politicians and taken away the local input that hundreds of us participated in to develop land use plans that represent the people of Wyoming, not just the coal industry.”

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The cancellation of the plan means that coal leasing can resume in the Powder River Basin despite the fact that there is no market demand for coal. The BLM recognized the disappearing energy market when it postponed a coal lease sale in Wyoming, after a lease sale bid in Montana was rejected for not meeting the fair market value last month. The rejected bid for the Montana coal lease sale from the Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC) amounted to one-tenth of a cent per ton. “The lengths they’re willing to go to prop up the coal industry, even in the shrinking market, beggar belief,” Huskinson said.

Congress’s use of the Congressional Review Act to interfere in land use plans this year has been unprecedented and has the potential to create uncertainty and chaos for land managers far into the future. For Wyoming residents hoping for responsible stewardship of resources, the CRA means that, without future Congressional action, the BLM will be prohibited from ever developing a similar plan that ends coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.

“Thanks to our senators, D.C. politicians have taken control of our public lands and minerals,” Huskinson said. “We have been slapped down by Congress to gratify the coal industry at the expense of everyday people.”