Environmental groups are knocking the Trump administration’s decision to open thousands of acres for coal mining that are a stone’s throw away from beloved public lands like Zion, Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef national parks.
The lease announcements came last week, and follow the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, along with President Donald Trump’s “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” executive order issued in April.
Investing in the nation’s coal industry will help meet the nation’s insatiable energy demand and bring blue-collar jobs back to rural communities, federal officials said.
“Washington doesn’t build prosperity,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote in a news release last week, “American workers and entrepreneurs do, and we’re giving them the tools to succeed.”
Environmental advocates, however, say investing in coal is going the way of the dinosaur.
“These attempts to hand over our public lands and wild spaces to corporate polluters are tone deaf to the voice of the people,” said Franque Bains, director of Utah Sierra Club, in an emailed statement Tuesday.