SEATTLE — A lawyer for a group of environmentalists, landowners and outdoor enthusiasts asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to at least temporarily block the expansion of a phosphate mine in southeastern Idaho, a move that the mine’s operator said would force almost immediate layoffs.
Timothy Preso, an attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, told the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that J.R. Simplot Co.’s plan for expanding the Smoky Canyon phosphate mine, approved by the Bush administration last June, would create a “massive environmental disturbance” without adequate scientific review.
He said the mine, which produces phosphate for fertilizer, has historically sent large amounts of naturally occurring selenium into local waters, which has poisoned or caused birth defects in wildlife and livestock.
A U.S. District Court judge in Idaho last fall refused to issue an injunction blocking the mine’s expansion into roadless areas of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, about 100 miles south of Yellowstone National Park. He found that the federal agencies spent years studying the expansion and used computer modeling to analyze whether the company’s plan for containing the selenium by covering it with limestone and topsoil would work.
Preso, who represents the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in the case, questioned the adequacy of that modeling, saying it didn’t consider what would happen during serious spring rains and snowmelt. He cited one of the U.S. Forest Service’s own scientists, who recommended more computer modeling before deciding whether to approve the plan.
“This was a huge omission in the agency’s modeling,” Preso said.
And, he said, the government still doesn’t have a handle on how much pollution there is at the mine or exactly where its sources are.
Justin R. Pidot, a Justice Department lawyer, told the judges that federal officials thoroughly studied the matter and reached a reasonable conclusion that the mine expansion was not likely to contribute to violations of the Clean Water Act.
“All modeling is to some extent uncertain because you’re running a computer model to predict how the real world is going to act,” Pidot said. “The real question here … is whether the agency had a reasoned basis for making its decision.”
On-the-ground monitoring of selenium levels would be conducted, he noted.
An attorney for Simplot said that without the expansion, the company would have to begin laying off some of the workers who are logging the site and building roads to prepare for it. The company has 210 workers at the mine, and another 350 at its fertilizer plant near Pocatello, Idaho.
“This is the economic engine of southeastern Idaho,” said Simplot lawyer Albert P. Barker.
Simplot, along with Monsanto Corp., have mined areas in southeastern Idaho for decades to feed their fertilizer factories. Simplot officials say expansion of Smoky Canyon, along the Webster Range 10 miles from the Wyoming border, is critical to keeping its plant near Pocatello running through 2025. Without it, the company says it will run out of phosphate by summer 2010.
But opponents say Smoky Canyon and 17 other former mines scattered along the edge of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem continue to pose an environmental threat to clean water, fish and wildlife. All are designated under Superfund status and Smoky Canyon has existing problems linked to selenium pollution leaking into streams and groundwater.
In December 1996, five horses grazing on private land downstream from one of southeastern Idaho’s more than 30 phosphate mine sites were poisoned with selenium and had to be destroyed. A year later, more horses and hundreds of sheep also died not far from another phosphate mine near Soda Springs.
The judges did not indicate when they would rule.
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