A J.R. Simplot Co. attorney says if a federal appeals court agrees with a group of environmentalists, outdoor enthusiasts, and landowners to temporarily block the 1,400-acre expansion of Simplot’s Smoky Canyon Mine in Idaho near the Wyoming border, almost immediate layoffs would result.
Simplot has mined at Smoky Canyon on the Caribou/Targhee National Forest since 1984. Each year, about 1.5 million tons of phosphate ore are removed and converted into slurry pumped through nearly 90 miles of pipeline to Simplot’s Don plant near Pocatello, where it’s converted into dry and liquid fertilizers used throughout North America.
Annual wages and salaries paid at Simplot’s Pocatello plant, where about 375 are employed, and its Smoky Canyon Mine, where about 210 are employed, exceed $52 million. Another estimated 1,450 people are indirectly employed by the operations, whose annual property taxes exceed $3 million.
On Tuesday, April 7, Timothy Preso, a lawyer with environmental law firm Earthjustice, told a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle that Simplot’s plan to expand the phosphate mine would create a “massive environmental disturbance” without sufficient scientific review. Preso said large amounts of selenium from the mine historically have leached into area streams and groundwater, poisoning or causing birth defects in livestock and wildlife.
The judges did not indicate when they would rule.
In December, Simplot started its expansion, which includes infrastructure work such as paving roads, installing utilities, and clearing timber. That is scheduled to continue for about a year before Simplot crews begin mining phosphate ore pits at the Smoky Canyon site.
In November, U.S. Magistrate Mikel Williams in Idaho refused to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the mine’s expansion into roadless areas of the national forest, about 100 miles south of Yellowstone National Park. He found the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management 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 that modeling’s adequacy, saying it didn’t consider what would happen during spring rains and snow melt. Claiming it was a large omission in the modeling, he cited a U.S. Forest Service scientist who recommended more computer modeling before deciding whether to approve the plan.
Preso said the federal government still doesn’t have a grasp on how much pollution there is at the mine, or its exact sources.
Simplot attorney Albert Barker said that without the expansion, the company would need to begin laying off workers who are logging the site and building roads to prepare for it. He called the operation “the economic engine of southeastern Idaho.”
Justin Pidot, a Justice Department attorney, 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. On-the-ground monitoring of selenium levels would be conducted, Pidot said.
Simplot, along with Monsanto and Agrium Inc., has mined areas in Southeast Idaho for decades to supply its phosphate processing plants. 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 the summer of 2010.
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.
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.