Washington — Cleaning up selenium contamination at 16 phosphate mines on public lands will probably cost "hundreds of millions of dollars," a newly released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says. The "informal estimate" comes from EPA officials, who told GAO that "long-term remedial actions" will likely be needed at several of the mines, all located in southeastern Idaho. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is responsible for leasing and oversight of mines on federal lands, has made some improvements to its program since 1996 – conducting "more detailed environmental analysis when evaluating new mine plans, requir[ing] phosphate mine operators to provide more comprehensive plans for reclaiming mine sites …, and … requir[ing] the mine operators to provide financial assurances that are based on the full estimated cost of reclaiming mines," instead of on the size of the mines. However, the report noted that BLM "has not documented its new full-cost financial assurance practice in agency policy and therefore has limited assurance that it will be implemented consistently." GAO also said BLM "has not fully coordinated with the Forest Service" when developing lease conditions and financial assurance amounts. Perhaps most troublesome, GAO said about $4.5 million of the $91 million in assurances held by BLM, the Forest Service, and EPA are in the form of risky "corporate guarantees" that could put taxpayers on the hook for the bulk of cleanup costs. "After years of study and millions of dollars spent, the agencies and mine operators are still years away from fully understanding the extent of contamination in the area and many more years away from completing actual mine cleanup," said GAO.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain