Montana’s only underground coal mine will be allowed to increase its production nearly tenfold under emergency permitting procedures that bypass completion of a court-ordered environmental impact statement.
Under the accelerated plan green-lighted on June 6 by the Department of the Interior, Signal Peak Energy’s Bull Mountains coal mine can expand its annual production by nearly 50 million tons each year for the next nine years, from 7–8 million tons to 22.8 million tons on federal lands and 34.5 million tons on adjacent private lands.
