U.S. Water News reports a legal battle shaping up between environmentalist groups and the J.R. Simplot Company over the company's phosphate mining operations in a southeastern Idaho wilderness area just 10 miles from the Wyoming border.An Earthjustice attorney, one member group of the environmental coalition, said an expansion plan granted by the U.S. Forest Service "is going to turn substantial acreage of roadless land into an open pit phosphate mine." Only the head administrators of the Forest Service, BLM and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne are named as defendants, but the suit is aimed at expanded mining by J.R. Simplot, which operated other phosphate mines along the border of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem where all 17 are designated under Superfund status as environmental threats.
The specific site in question is the Smoky Canyon area in the Webster Range at approximately N 42 degrees 44' lat. and W 110 degrees 58' long.
