PRESS STATEMENT: House Cancels Locally Developed Land Use Plan Amendment for Powder River Basin 

Using the Congressional Review Act, House tosses aside years of BLM consultation with Wyoming ranchers, farmers, Tribes, and other stakeholders

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

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, something the BLM recognized 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, from the Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC), for the Montana coal lease sale amounted to one-tenth of a cent per ton.

Using the Congressional Review Act to cancel the Buffalo RMPA means that, without Congressional action, the BLM will be prohibited from ever developing a similar plan that ends coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.

After the House vote, Lynne Huskinson, board chair of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, issued the following statement:

“By cancelling The Buffalo Resource Management Plan Amendment to allow new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, the U.S. House voided years of input by Wyoming’s people on this public plan for federal land and minerals management. 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. Local voices are being silenced, and the long arm of D.C. politics is running Wyoming. The lengths they’re willing to go to prop up the coal industry, even in the shrinking market, beggar belief.”  

More information:
Unprecedented use of this law could throw all federal land-use plans into ‘chaos’