SUWA claims the federal government relied on old, inadequate analysis of ecological impacts.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sevier Lake on Friday, July 18, 2025.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance renewed its legal battle Thursday against a pending potash mine in Millard County.
The Bureau of Land Management approved Peak Minerals’ plans to start extracting from brine beneath the crust of Sevier Dry Lake in June. But the project has moved in fits and starts. Companies have tried to mine the lake since at least 2009.
SUWA first sued over the potash extraction plans in 2023, after BLM gave the go-ahead for Peak Minerals to mine around 125,000 acres of the dry lake in 2019. The group asserted the federal agency’s decision violated the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, because the decision did not consider the full range of environmental impacts, or alternatives that would result in less ecological damage.
Like the Great Salt Lake, Sevier Lake is a shallow, terminal, salty lake that birds use as a migratory stopover. And like the Great Salt Lake, it has high concentrations of valuable minerals including potash, which is an important material for organic fertilizer.
A judge dismissed SUWA’s original suit last year after Peak Minerals amended its mining plans, meaning BLM would have to reevaluate its approval.
Peak Minerals made several changes to its proposal, indicating it would instead mine the lakebed in phases, potentially over a longer period. The initial phase would disturb a smaller footprint on the lake playa.
Peak Minerals recently received the green light from federal regulators to mine potash from the dry Sevier Lake playa. Its revised plans call for mining half the lakebed to start, with the option to expand across the entire surface in the future.
SUWA urged BLM to complete a more thorough NEPA analysis for Peak Minerals’ revised plans.
Instead, BLM relied on its NEPA review for the 2019 proposal, prompting SUWA to restart litigation this week.
SUWA said it had concerns about the industrial operation’s consequences for migrating birds, groundwater and dark night skies.
“By failing to conduct the required environmental analysis for a project of this magnitude,” SUWA attorney Hanna Larsen wrote in a news release, “BLM has rubber-stamped a decision to irreversibly alter the extremely wild and remote nature of Utah’s West Desert.”
A spokesperson for BLM did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but a news release from June 10 noted the Sevier Lake potash mine supports President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for more domestic mineral production.