California, New Mexico, New York and Washington State have sued the Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management in an attempt to stop new coal leases on public lands.
In March, the Trump administration ended an Obama-era moratorium on new coal operations. But prosecutors from the four states “are arguing new coal extraction would exacerbate global warming and violate the federal government’s statutory duty to use public lands ‘in a manner that will protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archaeological values,’ according to the filings,” says Reuters.
The prosecutors also have claimed that far from bringing profit to the states, coal mining would hamper them with extra costs from healthcare, flood control and other expenses related to environmental damage.