Miners, enviros and Idaho DEQ to pursue talks on groundwater

By JOHN MILLER, Associated Press Writer
Monday, February 18, 2008 6:59 PM CST

BOISE, Idaho — The Idaho mining industry and environmentalists will resume talks with state regulators in April over new groundwater pollution rules, ending a short-lived push by the Idaho Mining Association to get the 2008 Legislature to intervene.

Last week, the association asked the Senate Health and Welfare Committee to approve standards that would have freed phosphate mining companies such as the J.R. Simplot Co. from requirements that they restore groundwater beneath their mining sites to natural conditions after it had been contaminated with concentrations of minerals such as selenium.

The bill also asked the Legislature to expand the active mining area where pollution could occur.

It was introduced after the mining association and the Idaho Conservation League, an environmental group, failed to agree in 2007 to proposed new Idaho Department of Environmental Quality rules meant to clarify what must be done to address groundwater pollution beneath open-pit mines. In November, the agency postponed the talks until this April.

Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston and Health and Welfare Committee chairwoman, said she opted to let those negotiations continue after assurances from state Environmental Quality Director Toni Hardesty that a resolution could be reached without lawmakers being forced to intervene.

“I believe in the process,” Lodge said Friday. “The mining companies were concerned that they wouldn’t get a full hearing. I feel very content the two sides can work together and come up with a consensus.”

Phosphate mining companies insist they aren’t seeking a license to pollute groundwater on property adjacent to their mines, focused in eastern Idaho on or around the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.

Still, they fear that proposed rules that would require them to restore groundwater immediately beneath their mines and waste rock piles to natural conditions within eight years after they shutter their operations would hamper future investment.

Such a standard, even with the best modern practices, is impossible to guarantee, said Jack Lyman, a lobbyist for the Idaho Mining Association. He’s optimistic that renewed rulemaking talks starting in April will result in a resolution that’s satisfactory to industry and the state agency, if not environmentalists.

“Now I’ve got the Legislature’s attention,” Lyman said. “If we run into the kind of problems we did before, we’ll be back.”

When the bill was introduced Feb. 6, the Idaho Conservation League criticized the industry’s push to have the Legislature get involved, arguing any such action would be premature before negotiations were completed.

“It was a big mistake for the Mining Association to run to the Legislature and seek exemptions to laws that are in place to protect groundwater so that it is available for future use as drinking water,” said Justin Hayes, an Idaho Conservation League spokesman. “I am confident that the ongoing DEQ rulemaking is the correct place to bring their concerns.”

The advocacy group has criticized the mining industry, saying that companies are pushing Idaho to allow them to expand the areas where they can pollute groundwater in perpetuity to include broad swaths of public land where they dig ore from the ground, where they process it and where they deposit what’s left over.

The specter of selenium poisoning has colored the debate. At least four horses and hundreds of sheep died in the late 1990s after drinking contaminated water from defunct phosphate mines and their waste piles near Soda Springs.

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