Environmentalists sue to stop Utah potash mine that produces sought-after crop fertilizer

abcnews.go.com:

Environmentalists have filed a lawsuit to prevent the construction of a new potash mine they say would devastate a lake ecosystem in the drought-stricken western Utah desert

SALT LAKE CITY — Environmentalists filed a lawsuit on Monday to prevent the construction of a new potash mine that they say would devastate a lake ecosystem in the drought-stricken western Utah desert.

The complaint against the Bureau of Land Management is the latest development in the battle over potash in Utah, which holds some of the United States' largest deposits of the mineral used by farmers to fertilize crops worldwide.

Potash, or potassium sulfate, is currently mined in regions including Carlsbad, New Mexico and at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats, where the Bureau of Land Management also oversees a private company's potash mining operations.

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance argues in Monday's complaint that, in approving a potash mining operation at Sevier Lake — a shallow saltwater lake about halfway between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas — the Bureau of Land Management failed to consider alternatives that would cause fewer environmental impacts. They say the project could imperil the regional groundwater aquifer already plagued by competing demands from surrounding cities, farms and a nearby wildlife refuge.

“Industrial development of this magnitude will eliminate the wild and remote nature of Sevier Lake and the surrounding lands, significantly pair important habitat for migratory birds, and drastically affect important resource values including air quality, water quality and quantity and visual resources,” the group's attorneys write in the complaint.

The Bureau of Land Management's Utah office did not immediately respond to a request