“The Department of Interior (DOI) is overriding local decision-making in the rural West to allow expanded mining and resource extraction on federal public land, a report says.

According to the DOI’s critics,  documents recently released by an organization that represents public-sector employees demonstrate a pattern of ignoring science, public input and civil servants in favor of Washington, D.C.-based political appointees.

Documents made public through a Freedom of Information Act request by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), indicate that the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) decision to open almost a million acres to fossil fuel extraction in Western Colorado overruled the long-term process conducted by local field managers, and went against the wishes of the governor and the overwhelming majority of public comments.

‘This is a really good example of how politics plays into local land-use decision-making,’ said Chandra Rosenthal, PEER’s Rocky Mountain Director, in an interview with the Daily Yonder. ‘This decision is as high-handed as it is wrong-headed.'”

Read the PEER Story…