The Department of the Interior announced Tuesday it’s moving forward with the sale of several coal industry leases this fall, including two in Tuscaloosa County.
According to the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management will be offering two Alabama lease areas. The areas cover access to a combined 14,050 acres beneath private lands, which the interior department said contains roughly 53 million tons of recoverable metallurgical coal.
Applications for the leases were filed by subsidiaries of Warrior Met Coal Inc., Warrior Met Coal Mining LLC, and Warrior Met Coal BC, LLC, in order to expand the mining company’s existing operations in Tuscaloosa County.
The land consists of an approximately 5,704-acre plot to expand operations of Warrior Met Coal’s Mine No. 4 and an 8,346-acre plot to expand its Blue Creek Mine No. 1.
The sealed-bid sale of the lots is scheduled for September 30 at 10 a.m. EST, at the BLM Eastern States State Office in Falls Church, Virginia.
“These sales reflect the Trump administration’s commitment to strengthening American Energy Dominance, supporting local economies and securing a stable supply of critical resources for the nation’s economy,” the interior department wrote.
“Coal has long been the backbone of America’s energy and industrial strength,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a written statement.
“By moving forward with these lease sales, we are creating good-paying jobs, supporting local communities, and securing the resources that keep America strong. President Trump’s leadership is putting American workers first and ensuring our nation’s energy future is built on reliable, homegrown resources,” he added.
Burgum visited Warrior Met Coal’s No. 4 Mine earlier this year during an April trip to two Tuscaloosa County Warrior Met mines.
An in-person public hearing was held by BLM regarding the proposed leases on June 24 in Northport. The agency also held a public comment period from June 6 to July 21.
The BLM also released its draft environmental impact statement on Warrior Met Coal’s proposed expansions in June.
According to the bureau’s report, the proposed expansion of the No. 4 mine would lead to the extraction of 16.9 million tons of federal coal and an overall total of 73.1 million saleable tons of coal over a 21-year lifespan, while employing approximately 425 employees annually.
The bureau, meanwhile, reported that the Blue Creek Mine No. 1 proposal would extract roughly 36.3 million saleable tons of federal coal and an overall 154.2 million saleable tons of coal over a 43-year lifespan, while employing approximately 500 employees annually.
The report argued that the two proposals are not expected to exceed National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter 10 microns or less in diameter, particulate matter 2.5 microns or less in diameter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide.
The study also stated that the proposals don’t “have a reasonable potential to degrade the quality of the receiving streams relative to applicable state water quality standards.”
The report, however, warned that the proposals could negatively impact the water quality of private wells in surrounding areas and would put surface structures at an increased risk of subsidence and methane gas leaks.
“Adverse impacts to private well users’ health and safety may occur between actual contamination and detection of contamination,” the report states. “These impacts may be short or long-term depending on when the contamination began and when it was detected.”
“Though unlikely due to recently established mitigation efforts and monitoring, fugitive methane does have the potential to create imminent harm to the public or to private property when allowed to accumulate to explosive concentrations,” it continued.
The report argued that, while the proposals are expected to cause subsidence, “Warrior Met will monitor and follow mitigation procedures outlined in the [Subsidence Control Plans] in the event subsidence impacts do occur to dwellings, structures, or utilities.”
“These procedures include, but are not limited to, Warrior Met repairing or offering compensation for material damage that is found to be a result of subsidence,” the report continued. “This may consist of Warrior Met offering to purchase the property at market value in pre-subsidence condition or offer to compensate for diminution in value of the property caused by subsidence.”
The proposed Tuscaloosa County leases mark the largest plots of land up for sale this fall by BLM, alongside a 120-acre tract in Emery County, Utah and a 1,262-acre plot in Big Horn County, Montana, that prospective buyers will bid on in early October.
The Tuscaloosa County lease areas were also added to the FAST-41 permitting program by the Department of the Interior in April.
FAST-41 is a permitting process established by the legislature in 2015, aimed at “improving federal agency coordination and timeliness of environmental reviews for infrastructure projects.”
The interior department argued the lease sales will advance U.S. President Donald Trump’s energy agenda, pointing to the president’s executive orders “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production” and “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.”
