What's Happening: Even as selenium is released from phosphate mining in the southwest corner of Greater Yellowstone, the Bureau of Land Management continues to accept new proposals for even more mining. Last fall the BLM released a draft environmental impact statement for the most recent mine proposal – Monsanto’s Blackfoot Bridge Mine. In late November, GYC submitted more than 450 pages of detailed comments and supporting documentation and reports on the DEIS. All told, more than 7,000 comments were received by the BLM on the proposal. The final decision on the mine proposal was originally scheduled for this past February. We have since learned that the Bureau of Land Management is taking a much-needed second look and reassessment of the proposal. The decision on that mine has been delayed until the end of the year.

Unfortunately the toxic phosphate mining footprint in Greater Yellowstone could still grow in a dangerous and unprecedented way if the Bureau of Land Management OKs the sale of more than 1,100 acres of public lands — your lands — to the J.R. Simplot Co. for a new mining project. Simplot wants the land to create a giant tailings impound for its new Dairy Syncline Mine about 10 miles east of Soda Springs, Idaho. If it gets the go-ahead, it'll be the first time that public lands are sold to a private company for phosphate mining in southeast Idaho. Stay tuned: GYC and many of you submitted public comments before the May 28 deadline. We hope they will hear us and halt this unfortunate idea. The grisly discovery of 18 dead cows at an abandoned phosphate-mining site in August 2009 is a grim reminder of selenium's lethal nature. The cattle had been at J.R. Simplot's Lanes Creek Mine — just a few miles from the Blackfoot Wildlife Management Area — for less than a week before they started dying. The Department of Environmental Quality suspects they were poisoned after eating woody aster, which accumulates selenium in copious amounts. These deaths occurred about 10 miles from Simplot's controversial Smoky Canyon Mine, where the company hopes to expand its toxic footprint. The livestock deaths were the first documented involving cattle; more than 500 sheep and a half-dozen horses also have perished. At the same time the BLM is considering the new Simplot mine, it has also accepted a mine plan for Agrium’s Rasmussen Valley Mine, perched just above the Blackfoot River within the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Blackfoot River Wildlife Management Area.

This coming October 9th, the Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments on our legal challenge to the permitting of the Smoky Canyon Mine expansion. We hope to know by the end of the year if that challenge is successful.

The Issue: Phosphate mines in the southwest corner of Greater Yellowstone have scarred the landscape and dumped poisonous selenium into area streams in substantial amounts, killing horses, livestock, and wildlife. It has also ruined habitat of the struggling cutthroat trout. A year ago one of the companies, Simplot, was given partial approval to expand its Smoky Canyon Mine into the Sage Creek roadless area. Having already exceeded federal and state water-quality standards, they can't advance until they clean up some of their Superfund mess. Click here to see a video of selenium's toxic effects. In the meantime other companies wanting to build new mines in roadless areas and along the Blackfoot River, with no meaningful cleanup of past mining operations.

Our Mission: To ensure cleanup of the 17 phosphate mine Superfund sites, to halt expansion at Smoky Canyon until the existing Superfund site has been cleaned up and to prohibit mine development in any roadless areas. GYC supports the Caribou Clean Water Partnership. Learn more about the consequences of phosphate mining at www.cariboucleanwater.org. We are also determined to ensure that Monsanto can't mine at Blackfoot Bridge until it demonstrates it can do so without releasing selenium into the river.