The complaint filed July 31 against the Bureau of Land Management is the latest development in the battle over the potash in Utah.
The state holds some of the largest domestic deposits of the mineral farmers use to fertilize crops worldwide.
Potash, or potassium sulfate, is mined in areas including Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats and Carlsbad, New Mexico.
As a fertilizer, potash lacks some of the climate change impacts that come with nitrogen and phosphorus-based fertilizers.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance argued in Monday’s complaint that in approving potash mining in Sevier Lake, the BLM failed to consider alternatives that would cause fewer environmental impacts.
“Industrial development of this magnitude will eliminate the wild and remote nature of Sevier Lake and the surrounding lands, significantly impair 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 wrote in the complaint.
The group says the project could imperil a regional aquifer already plagued by competing demands from Cedar Valley and neighboring cities.
The complaint comes months after Peak Minerals, the company developing the Sevier Lake mine, announced it had secured a $30 million loan from an unnamed investor.
Demand for domestic sources of potash, which the U.S. considers a critical mineral, has spiked since the start of the war in Ukraine as sanctions and supply chain issues disrupted exports from Russia and Belarus.
As global supply has decreased and prices have surged, many countries are pushing to expand or develop new mines like the Sevier Lake mine.
