Latest news with #BlueCreek
Sky News
5 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News
'It's incredible': Seized ancestral homelands handed back to Yurok Tribe in California
Roughly 73 square miles of ancestral homelands have been returned to the Yurok Tribe in California. The move is what is known as a "land-back" deal - where homelands are returned to indigenous people through ownership or co-stewardship. The land-back conservation project along the Klamath River, a partnership between the Yurok Tribe and the Western Rivers Conservancy, is being called the largest in state history. The Yurok Tribe had 90% of its territory taken during the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s, suffering massacres and disease from settlers. For more than a century, the land was then owned and managed by timber companies - severing the tribe's access to its homelands. However, over 73 square miles of land along Blue Creek stream and the eastern side of the lower Klamath River in northern California will now be permanently managed by the Yurok Tribe for fish, wildlife and forest health within the newly-created Blue Creek Salmon Sanctuary and Yurok Tribal Community Forest. Western Rivers Conservancy and the Yurok Tribe established a long-term partnership in 2009 to buy 47,097 acres along the lower Klamath and Blue Creek from Green Diamond Resource Company. It has cost the partnership $56million (£41m). The deal to hand back the land comes amid mounting recognition that indigenous people's traditional knowledge is critical to addressing climate change. Studies found the healthiest, most biodiverse and resilient forests are on protected native lands where indigenous people remained stewards. The tribe's plans include reintroducing fire as a forest management tool, clearing lands for prairie restoration, removing invasive species and planting trees while providing work for some of the tribe's more than 5,000 members and helping restore salmon and wildlife. The area is home to many creatures, including northern spotted owls, elk, deer and mountain lions. Galen Schuler, a vice president at Green Diamond Resource Company, the previous land owner, said the forests were sustainably managed by the firm when it managed them. Over the last decade, nearly 4,700 square miles (12,173 square kilometers) were returned to tribes in 15 states through a federal program. Barry McCovey Jr, whose ancestors were members of the Yurok Tribe, was involved in the effort to get the land returned to the tribe and said: "Snorkelling Blue Creek ... I felt the significance of that place to myself and to our people, and I knew then that we had to do whatever we could to try and get that back." Mr McCovey Jr, who is director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, would have to sneak through metal gates and hide from security guards in order to fish in the Blue Creek stream connected to the Klamath River. He said: "To go from when I was a kid and 20 years ago even, from being afraid to go out there to having it be back in tribal hands … is incredible." The tribe aims to restore the historic prairies, but members know it's going to take decades of work for the lands and waterways to heal. "And maybe all that's not going to be done in my lifetime," said Mr McCovey Jr. "But that's fine, because I'm not doing this for myself."
Fast Company
08-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Trump wants to fast-track an Alabama coal mine expansion—but almost all its rock is shipped overseas
BROOKWOOD, Ala.—The Trump administration has announced it will aim to fast-track the permitting and environmental review of a major coal mine expansion in central Alabama as part of a larger effort to accelerate the construction of what the government has labeled 'critical mineral' infrastructure. While administration officials said the change is aimed at 'significantly reduc[ing] our reliance on foreign nations,' coal produced as part of Warrior Met's expansion in Alabama is almost entirely exported overseas to support foreign steelmaking markets, according to the company. Warrior Met's Blue Creek mine expansion, set to be one of the largest coal build-outs in Alabama history, is one of 20 planned developments deemed 'transparency projects' by the administration over the last two months. The mine expansion will be placed on the federal government's permitting dashboard as it moves its way through the regulatory and permitting process. The projects' inclusion on the dashboard authorized under the 2015 Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST) will, according to the Trump administration, 'make the environmental review and authorizations schedule for these vital mineral production projects publicly available and allow all of these projects to benefit from increased transparency. 'The public nature of the dashboard ensures that all stakeholders, from project sponsors and community members to federal agency leaders, have up-to-date accounting of where each project stands in the review process,' the administration said in its announcement. 'This transparency leads to greater accountability, ensuring a more efficient process.' During the Biden administration, the so-called FAST-41 dashboard was used to fast-track projects aimed at benefiting tribal nations, as well as various projects advancing renewable energy, coastal restoration, broadband, and electricity transmission sectors. The program was created as a means 'to enhance transparency and increase the efficiency of the permitting process,' the Biden administration said at the time. With a new president, though, the programs designated to participate—and the policy priorities they represent—have now changed. The Trump administration has already signaled its support of the Alabama project. In April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited an existing Warrior Met mine outside Tuscaloosa and took a windshield tour of the Blue Creek facility currently under construction. During that visit, Burgum emphasized the administration's stated commitment to fossil fuel production and said that its actions would 'unleash American energy.' He did not acknowledge Warrior Met's checkered safety and environmental record or that nearly all of its product—metallurgical coal—is shipped overseas for foreign steelmaking operations, not used in the U.S. 'We sell substantially all of our steelmaking coal production to steel producers outside of the United States,' a recent Warrior Met corporate filing said. 'For the three months ended March 31, 2025, our geographic customer mix was 37% in Europe, 43% in Asia, and 20% in South America.' The planned expansion of Blue Creek involves a major build-out of Warrior Met's ability to mine for underground coal using the longwall method, a particularly destructive form of mining in which large machines shear walls of coal, leaving vast, empty expanses in their wake. Land above those empty caverns sinks, causing what is often permanent damage to the surface and structures there. Longwall mining has devastated communities in Alabama and beyond. In March 2024, an Alabama home exploded above a longwall mine with a different owner after methane—a gas released during mining—seeped into the residence and ignited. The resulting blast killed an Alabama grandfather and seriously injured his grandson. Since then, the community above the Oak Grove mine in western Jefferson County has continued to crumble, with homes' foundations cracking as the longwall mine expands below. Earlier this year, just as President Donald Trump was announcing efforts to promote 'clean, beautiful coal,' a West Virginia woman was hospitalized after a methane explosion in her home atop a longwall mine left her seriously injured. Workers from the mine beneath her home had stood behind Trump during his White House announcement. Once completed, Warrior Met's Blue Creek expansion will increase the company's coal production by 60%, providing additional supply for overseas steelmaking markets hungry for metallurgical coal that can meet production needs. Taxpayer-funded support for the facility may top $400 million. The company has also asked the federal government to allow it to mine publicly owned coal as part of the Blue Creek project. The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced last year that it would conduct an environmental assessment related to Warrior Met's Blue Creek project and, specifically, its proposal to mine 14,040 acres of federal minerals underlying privately owned land in Tuscaloosa County. Warrior Met's applications to lease the coal rights propose the extraction of approximately 57.5 million tons of recoverable public coal reserves. Initial government scoping documents indicated that any environmental assessment of the Blue Creek project would include an analysis of its impact on climate change, both direct and indirect. Since those initial documents were released, however, federal guidance on the inclusion of climate change considerations in government decision-making has been in flux. A day-one executive order by Trump, for example, disbanded the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, which was established pursuant to a Biden executive order. The order said 'any guidance, instruction, recommendation, or document issued by the IWG is withdrawn as no longer representative of governmental policy.' That guidance had emphasized the importance of government analysis of the social cost of carbon, a way of putting a dollar figure on the economic damage that comes from emitting a ton of carbon dioxide. The Trump White House has said without evidence that the concept 'is marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation.' Public comments on the project already submitted to BLM included concerns around greenhouse gas emissions and Warrior Met's contribution to the climate crisis. 'Please do not approve any new or expanded coal mining,' one commenter wrote. 'The climate crisis is already deadly and rapidly getting worse. There is an overwhelming international consensus on the severity of this crisis and the urgent need to phase out the use of harmful fossil fuels.'
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Warrior to Provide Updates on Transformational Blue Creek Project via New Dedicated Blue Creek Webpage
BROOKWOOD, Ala., March 13, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Warrior Met Coal, Inc. (NYSE:HCC) ("Warrior" or the "Company") today launched a new webpage dedicated to the Blue Creek project. Warrior will use this new webpage to provide updates on the progress of Blue Creek as the project nears completion. The webpage will include updates in the form of investor presentations, news releases, pictures, and videos of milestones and progress as they occur over the next fifteen months. The Blue Creek webpage can be found on the investor section of the website at About Warrior Warrior is a U.S.-based, environmentally and socially minded supplier to the global steel industry. It is dedicated entirely to mining non-thermal metallurgical (met) steelmaking coal used as a critical component of steel production by metal manufacturers in Europe, South America, and Asia. Warrior is a large-scale, low-cost producer and exporter of premium quality met coal, also known as hard-coking coal (HCC), operating highly efficient longwall operations in its underground mines based in Alabama. The HCC that Warrior produces from the Blue Creek coal seam contains very low sulfur and has strong coking properties. The premium nature of Warrior's HCC makes it ideally suited as a base feed coal for steel makers. For more information, please visit View source version on Contacts Analysts and Investors, contact: Dale W. Boyles, (205) 554-6129 News Media, contact: D'Andre Wright, (205) 554-6131 Sign in to access your portfolio
