RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reversed an earlier bid to dig deeper into the planned expansion of a phosphate mine that employs more than 1,000 workers but also would uproot wetlands.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a letter Wednesday that it changed its mind about additional review because the PCS Phosphate mine along the Pamlico River has reduced the scope of its planned expansion. The EPA could still decide later to block mining in environmentally sensitive parts of the mine's 11,000-acre expansion tract, Geoff Gisler, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said Thursday.
The EPA had asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in March to hold off issuing a permit allowing for the mine's expansion due to concern about how the project may effect waterways and about 4,000 acres of wetlands. But acting assistant EPA administrator Michael Shapiro's letter said the agency was satisfied with revisions that set aside another 111 acres of wetlands, waters, and ground.
"EPA accepts that the current configuration is the least environmentally damaging, economically feasible, and practicable alternative," Shapiro said in explaining the decision not to review the project at EPA's Washington headquarters.
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The decision comes three months after U.S. Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Reps. Walter Jones R-N.C., and G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., wrote the EPA complaining that it was "unacceptable" that the mine's expansion efforts were still ongoing after eight years.
A spokesman for Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc., also known as PotashCorp, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The mine has operated on the Pamlico River for about 35 years and is Beaufort County's largest employer. The phosphate ore mined there is used to make phosphoric acid for food products, fertilizers and animal feed supplements. About 4.4 million tons of phosphate rock was produced in 2008, the company's web site said.
The Pamlico River and Pamlico Sound are nursery areas for many species of fish found along the Atlantic coast.