This Coal Mine Has Been Called a “Den of Thievery.” Why Is It Still Operational?

The document details the legal and environmental challenges facing the Bull Mountains Underground Coal Mine in Montana, highlighting a history of corruption, health and safety violations, and water contamination. It criticizes the Office of Surface Mining for failing to properly assess the climate impacts of a proposed 170-million-ton expansion and calls on the Department of the Interior to halt operations and shift focus to mine reclamation.

• A federal judge halted coal mining at the Bull Mountains Underground Coal Mine on February 10, 2023, pending an environmental impact statement regarding a proposed 170-million-ton expansion.
• The Bull Mountains Mine is the fifth largest underground coal mine in the U.S. by production, yielding about 7 million tons of coal annually; a proposed expansion could emit over 250 million tons of greenhouse gases.
• Signal Peak Energy has faced a criminal sentence and a $1 million fine for health and safety violations, including the illegal disposal of toxic slurry waste that threatened local water sources.
• The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April 2022 that the Office of Surface Mining wrongly approved the mine's expansion by ignoring climate and environmental impacts.

APA

Wheeler, P. (2023). This Coal Mine Has Been Called a “Den of Thievery.” Why Is It Still Operational? Earthjustice. https://earthjustice.org/experts/perry-wheeler/this-coal-mine-has-been-called-a-den-of-thievery-why-is-it-still-operational

Chicago

Wheeler, Perry. This Coal Mine Has Been Called a “Den of Thievery.” Why Is It Still Operational? Earthjustice, 2023. https://earthjustice.org/experts/perry-wheeler/this-coal-mine-has-been-called-a-den-of-thievery-why-is-it-still-operational.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Wheeler |first1=Perry |title=This Coal Mine Has Been Called a “Den of Thievery.” Why Is It Still Operational? |publisher=Earthjustice |date=14 February 2023 |url=https://earthjustice.org/experts/perry-wheeler/this-coal-mine-has-been-called-a-den-of-thievery-why-is-it-still-operational |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{wheeler2023this, author = {Wheeler, Perry}, title = {{This Coal Mine Has Been Called a “Den of Thievery.” Why Is It Still Operational?}}, publisher = {Earthjustice}, year = {2023}, month = feb, url = {https://earthjustice.org/experts/perry-wheeler/this-coal-mine-has-been-called-a-den-of-thievery-why-is-it-still-operational}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }