CHEYENNE – On January 30, Wyoming filed both a motion to dismiss and a motion to intervene in a lawsuit that seeks to halt the leasing of all federal coal reserves in the United States.

The suit brought by Western Organization of Resources Councils v. Jewell claims that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) must stop leasing coal until it updates a 1979 environmental analysis of the regional coal leasing program, a program the BLM has not used for decades.

Wyoming and the BLM comprehensively review the environmental impacts of every individual coal lease through a multi-year process. That process fulfills both the spirit and the letter of the law, Governor Mead said. The environmental groups are asking the Court to order the BLM to undertake a fruitless exercise.

Wyoming explains in its motion to dismiss the BLM no longer uses the regional leasing program; therefore, it is under no obligation now to update an analysis of a program it no longer uses.