PotashCorp’s PCS Phosphates-Aurora Division (PCS) has received a revised water quality certification from the state of North Carolina for the company’s planned mine expansion at the Aurora facility. The permit will be incorporated in the forthcoming U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decision on a federal permit for the expansion. PCS said last week it expects the Army Corps to act by the end of April.
In the meantime, local officials have been lining up in support of the mine expansion. PCS employs over 1,000 in Beaufort County, and is the county’s largest employer. Local environmental groups continue to oppose the mine expansion, fearing its impact on wetlands and streams.
The new permit is the latest development in PCS’s ten-year permitting process to expand the facility. Last June, the company modified its earlier expansion plans to mine fewer acres and impact less wetlands (GM June 2, 2008, p. 1). The new plan would undertake an approximate 11,909 acre mine advance into the approximately 15,100 acre project area surrounding its current mining operation north of Aurora. The expansion would accommodate 37 years of mining at 5 million st/y, and would impact approximately 4,135 acres of wetlands. Previously, PCS has sought to advance into 13,931 acres, impacting 5,667 acres of wetlands. In the interim, however, the Army Corps had asked PCS for alternatives.
Last June, PCS said it still had four years of mining at its existing Aurora operations.
PCS says that for each acre of wetlands disturbed, 1.8-2 acres would be restored or preserved by the company, which is similar to the company’s current permit. However, the Pamlico-Tar River Foundation, a local environmental group that has actively eyed the project, maintains it will be the largest destruction of wetlands in the state’s history. Pamlico also fears that PCS will mitigate wetlands elsewhere while the Aurora wetlands are needed for local flood control, and that high levels of cadmium, arsenic, and chromium will be in the soils used to reclaim mined lands and will leach into groundwater.