Much has been said already about the potentially devastating impact on northwestern Colorado’s economy if one of its top industries, mining, is brought to its knees by a lawsuit that effectively seeks the shutdown of the Colowyo coal mine near Craig. Yet, as disastrous as that outcome would be for locals, it’s just the tip of the iceberg for Colorado ratepayers.
The development has made national headlines in recent weeks. Acting on a lawsuit brought by the anti-coal mining group WildEarth Guardians, a federal judge ruled in May that the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining did not fully comply with federal procedure when it approved mining plans for both the Colowyo and Trapper mines—nearly a decade ago. The court gave the agency 120 days to complete an environmental analysis for Colowyo that conforms to the procedures laid out in the National Environmental Policy Act; if the analysis is not completed within the timeframe—a tall task—the mine will be ordered to shut down.
That outcome would indeed come as a severe blow to the region: The mine’s 220 employees are estimated to earn a total of nearly $25 million annually, with the value of the mine’s output totaling more than $100 million as recently as 2013. The mine’s direct and indirect economic impacts in the region total $206.7 million a year.
As fellow Coloradans, we feel their pain, but the ripple effects also stand to reach much further. The coal mined at Colowyo in part fuels the Craig Station power plant. Which is to say that this could profoundly affect power consumers in that region and beyond. Not only does power generation in that area directly contribute $441.3 million to the gross regional product, but perhaps even more significant for all of Colorado, Colowyo provides affordable, clean-burning fuel for many of our state’s residential and commercial electricity consumers.
Our coalition has contended for years that energy policies fail outright if they do not fundamentally take into account their impact on the cost of energy for rank-and-file ratepayers. That applies to energy policy created by policy-making bodies like the General Assembly and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission—as well as by our courts. And while strictly speaking, the courts are simply interpreting the law, make no mistake: Their rulings have the practical effect of creating new policies.
We long have advocated for Colorado’s electricity customers in the face of successive rate hikes brought on, in significant measure, by new policies aimed at achieving broader ends. Those ends include converting to “greener” and more “sustainable” fuels and complying with new state and federal air standards. Whatever the merits of such goals in themselves, as we repeatedly have contended, they are hardly sustainable if more and more Coloradans cannot afford them in the first place.
The court’s ruling comes as Colorado girds for sweeping—and costly—new federal air mandates imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Those mandates unfortunately are to be implemented with few checks and balances by our own state’s regulatory framework, notably the PUC. Right now, only the Colorado Department of Health and Environment will have an instrumental role in implementation, and unlike the PUC, the health department is not charged with evaluating the new rules’ burden on the consumers who will be forced to pay for them.
The scale of the cost promises to be vast and as yet has not even been projected. An attempt in the 2015 legislature to give the PUC and as well as the General Assembly itself more say over implementation was scuttled at the eleventh hour in a legislative committee.
A court ruling like this couldn’t come at a worse time, and it is deeply troubling that the U.S. Interior Department has decided not even to appeal the judge’s order—arguably, tacit support for the costly lawsuit that instigated the court’s decision.
To their considerable credit, key Colorado elected officials have stood up for the mine and have called on the Interior Department to defend its own policies against the lawsuit. Last week, Colorado U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner, and U.S. Reps. Scott Tipton and Ed Perlmutter sent Interior Secretary Sally Jewell a letter chiding her failure to speak out on the issue and stating the “the executive branch has a duty to defend its permitting actions.”
Gov. John Hickenlooper also has expressed support for the Colowyo mine’s continued operation in the face of the federal court ruling and has called on Jewell to “do everything possible” to prevent the mine’s shutdown.
It is at least reassuring to know some of Colorado’s most powerful elected officials understand there is more to energy policy than lofty goals; there also are those policies’ real-life impact. When activists blithely litigate on the backs of even the hardest-pressed ratepayers—the poor, the unemployed, seniors on fixed incomes, struggling mom-and-pop businesses; the list goes on—no one wins.