Under Trump, Coal Mining Gets New Life on U.S. Lands<br />In February, even before the Senate confirmed Mr. Zinke to his new post, Mr. Reavey of Cloud Peak was meeting<br />at the Interior Department headquarters in Washington with President Trump’s political appointees.<br />Elected to the House in 2014, Mr. Zinke received $14,000 in campaign donations from the company<br />that owns BNSF Railway, the chief transporter of coal in the Powder River Basin, as well as a total of $26,000 from Cloud Peak, Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources, three of the nation’s largest coal companies.<br />“Our greatest treasures are public lands,” Mr. Zinke said in a speech.<br />“They are liars, and they know it,” Mr. Reavey, the Cloud Peak lobbyist, said of<br />those who suggested the industry was not paying its fair share in royalties.<br />Such a change would be a blow to the bottom lines of companies mining in the Powder River Basin, which accounts<br />for about 85 percent of all coal extracted from federal lands, with a growing share headed to Asia.<br />As he left the brief gathering, Mr. Cadman said he was only catching up with Mr. Zinke, whom he has known for decades, on family-related matters.<br />“As Interior secretary, I am looking at both sides of our balance sheet,” Mr. Zinke said.<br />“If we hand over control of these lands to a narrow range of special interests, we lose an iconic part of the country — and the West’s identity,” said Chris Saeger, executive director of the Montana-based environmental group Western Values Project, referring to coal mining and oil and gas drilling<br />that the Interior Department is moving to rapidly expand.
