The federal government has rejected for the second time an offer from a company that wants to drill test holes for potash near the historic Hastings Cut-Off Trail in Tooele County’s West Desert.
If they find a sufficient quantity of the potassium bearing mineral that is used as a fertilizer, Mesa Explorations plans to build an $85 million potash extraction plant northeast of Wendover.
In November 2013, the Bureau of Land Management denied permit applications from Mesa Explorations to drill test holes on 104-square-miles of land north of the Silver Island Mountains near Wendover.
While working on the appeal Foster Wilson, president and CEO of Mesa Exploration who works out of the company’s Reno, Nevada office, was encouraged by the Department of the Interior’s regional solicitor to submit Wilson a settlement proposal for the BLM to consider.
Last week Wilson was informed by the email the BLM was not interested in negotiating a settlement.
“I’ve played by the rules, followed all the procedural chores, paid all the fees and we’ve been stonewalled on all our potash projects in Utah,” Wilson said. “We have three applications in Grand County that have been going on six and a half years now.”
Mesa Explorations has demonstrated responsible drilling and reclamation on lands administered by the BLM in the Moab field office from 2005 to 2007, according to Wilson.
The BLM has not commented on the reason for the latest denial.
Juan Palma, state director of the BLM for Utah, cited the Hastings Cut-Off Trail, which is part of the California National Historic Trail that bisects the 104-square-mile study site, and congressional action that prevents the BLM from amending its resource plan for the area, in November 2013 as reasons for the denied application.
In the settlement offer, Wilson offered to establish a 2,500-foot buffer zone along the Hastings Cut-Off Trail, which is part of the California National Historic Trail.
The agreement also called for the use of low profile equipment to mitigate visual impact, restrictions to minimize dust, avoiding crossing or occupying the trail itself, and financial commitments to pay for required studies if sufficient potash is found to make a commercial potash operation viable.
“We could use lower berms and contour the evaporation ponds to look like dry lake beds,” Wilson said.
However, Oregon-California Trail preservationists are not happy with drilling test holes and the potential location of a potash operation near the historic trail.
“The building of the evaporation ponds will alter the flow of fresh water across the playa and effectively destroy the trail,” said Roy Tea of Salt Lake City who is the West Desert and Hastings Cut-Off West Trail coordinator for the Oregon-California Trail Association.
The Pilot Mountain portion of the trail provides a well preserved view of the emigration route and affords a unique view of the hardships faced by early travelers on their way to California, according to Tea.
Tea suggests Mesa Explorations should look in the valley to the north, the Newfoundland Basin, for potash.
Wilson has named the 104-acre site the Bounty Potash Project.
Historical exploration done in the area as far back as 1966 indicated the Bounty site may hold as much as 5.1 million tons of muriate or potash, according to Wilson.
Mesa Explorations holds out the hope of 40 full-time employees averaging $70,000 per year at the proposed site east of Pilot Mountain.
Those jobs would be an economic boon to Wendover, Utah, according to Mayor Mike Crawford.
“We’re familiar with potash mining out here and I’m comfortable that the potash could be extracted without impacting the trail,” Crawford said.
Tooele County would also receive a boost in property taxes from the company’s mining facilities.
Wilson’s settlement proposal includes a letter of support from Tooele County Commissioner Jerry Hurst.
“I am very supportive of this project as long as it is environmentally safe and I am confident that it can be,” wrote Hurst.
Wilson compares the Bounty project to Intrepid Potash’s 137-square-mile site near Wendover that is one of Tooele County’s largest property taxpayers.
Although the BLM’s resource management plan for the area authorizes mineral leasing and development, the RMP was prepared before Congress created the California Historic Trail in 1992, according to Palma.
The National Park Service manages the trail.
The management plan for the California Historic Trail completed by the park service, designated the Hastings Cut-Off, which was the route taken by the ill-fated Donner-Reed Party in 1846, as a high potential route segment.
The National Trails System Act defines a “high potential route segment” as a portion of a trail with greater than average scenic value, or affording the opportunity to vicariously share the experience of the original users of the route.
Before allowing prospecting and mineral leasing in the Pilot Mountain area, the BLM would need to amend its land use plan to include consideration for the national historic trail.
However, the 2000 and 2006 National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) restrict the ability of the BLM to amend its plan for Utah’s west desert, Palma said. That restriction dates back to the work of two Congressmen from Utah.
In an effort to keep high-level nuclear waste out of Skull Valley in 1999, then Utah Congressmen James Hansen inserted language into the NDAA that stopped the BLM from adopting amendments to its management plan for the West Desert until the Department of Defense prepares and submits to Congress a study of how activities on land in the West Desert would impact military operations in the area. Congressman Rob Bishop had similar language inserted in the 2006 NDAA.
The Department of Defense has yet to initiate that study.
With the settlement proposal denied, Wilson is pursuing the appeal, a process he expects will take at least a year to complete.