All Posts from June 9, 2014

Idaho phosphate mine exploration keeping BLM busy

Southeastern Idaho phosphate mining activity is keeping employees at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Pocatello field office as busy as they can remember as the J.R. Simplot Co., Agrium, Monsanto, and now Fertoz actively engage in developing new open pit mine sites in the Caribou/Targhee National Forest.

Bill Stout, BLM planning and environmental coordinator, says he is processing five or six exploration applications and other permits as the companies forge ahead. “We’ve had more analyses than ever in at least 12 years,” he said.

While planning a new Dairy Syncline Mine, Simplot is trying to extract all the phosphate it can from the Smoky Canyon Mine, which it is expanding. Monsanto also may develop a mine at Caldwell Canyon. Agrium is eyeing a Lanes Creek mine on private land, and plans to develop Rasmussen Valley and Husky North mines on federal land. While Idaho rock supplies Agrium’s Pocatello plant, Agrium is in the early stages of a seven-year phosphate rock supply agreement with Morocco’s OCP for its Redwater, Alberta, plant, with the goal of finding another source before that contract has expired. Redwater was previously supplied by Agrium’s idled and depleted Kapuskasing, Ont., mine.

Stout says that if Stonegate Agricom were to expand its Paris Hills Phosphate Project near Paris and Bloomington onto federal land in addition to state and private land, the BLM most likely would become involved in ensuring the project complies with federal regulations.

It can take eight to 10 years from submission of an application to commencement of mine construction, says Stout, who works with seven other Pocatello BLM staffers in mine permitting, inspection, and verification of tonnage. The BLM is the federal government’s minerals management agency.

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Forest Service also work closely with the BLM in regulating the phosphate industry, ensuring provisions are met and ecological systems protected.

BLM Minerals Branch Chief Jeff Cundick notes the western phosphate field extends from Montana to Nevada and Utah, but its richest, thickest deposit happens to sit squarely in the middle of Caribou County, Idaho. That world-class minerals deposit produces about 13 percent of U.S. phosphate, or 4 percent of the entire world’s production, he added.

The three active mines operated by Simplot, Agrium, and Monsanto generate 6.5-7 million tons of phosphate annually. Idaho phosphate mine royalties paid to the federal government total about $8 million a year, with half of that money returned to the Gem State.

Idaho’s phosphate mining and processing industry employs about 5,500, generates $130 million in annual salaries, creates $750 million in annual purchases, and produces $2 billion in value-added products per year. Cundick pointed out that mining is capital intensive, with large expenditures paid up front.

Following FMC’s closure of its Pocatello elemental phosphorus plant in December 2001, Monsanto’s elemental phosphorus plant at Soda Springs is the only one of its kind left in the United States. Florida produces eight to 10 times more phosphate than Idaho, but its reserves are rapidly depleting, which will put more focus on southeastern Idaho’s deposits, according to Cundick, who added that “Mining companies really need to be masters of their own destiny.”

EPA has classified 15 phosphate mining sites in southeastern Idaho as Superfund sites. In 1996, the region’s selenium contamination problem came to light when the death of horses that had grazed near the abandoned Mabey Canyon Mine was blamed on selenium toxicosis, triggering a major investigation.

Hundreds of sheep and cattle also died from selenium poisoning after eating taint