Outgoing Trump Administration Granting Last-Minute Approvals for Mining Activities on Public Lands
The outgoing Trump administration has been working on approving large-scale energy and mining projects on federal lands. Projects include the construction of a copper mine in Arizona and sanctioning the building of a natural gas pipeline through the Jefferson National Forest in West Virginia and Virginia. These projects show the Forest Service and the Interior Department’s objective to discover ways to grow domestic energy and mining production, in spite of intense protests from activists and environmentalists. The Forest Service controls 193 million acres of public lands while the Interior Department manages 480 million acres. The last-minute approvals show how extensively…