Feds OK More Coal Extraction At Northwest Colorado Mine

DENVER (AP) — Federal regulators say operations can continue at a northwest Colorado coal mine under a plan that calls for the company to donate land for the greater sage grouse.

Lee Boughey, a spokesman for the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, said Wednesday that the Interior Department is allowing the Colowyo Coal Company to continue working reserves in Moffat and Rio Blanco counties first leased from the Bureau of Land Management in 1982.

Colowyo Coal is a subsidiary of Tri-State, which supplies dozens of electric cooperatives and public power districts in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming.

As part of the approved plan, Tri-State donated to Colorado 4,543 acres as habitat for the ground-dwelling bird whose numbers are declining. Boughey says the federal government's approval preserves more than 200 mining jobs.

(© Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)