A court-appointed official will now run US Magnesium, as feds say the mining company is missing clean-up deadlines
The division is tasked with managing the bed, banks and the minerals within the brines of the Great Salt Lake. At its plant 40 miles west of Salt Lake City, US Magnesium has long mined minerals from salts extracted from the lake, as the sole producer of raw magnesium, in the United States. • US Magnesium initially had to provide $10.6 million in “financial assurance” — such as a bond or an escrow account — that it could cover the costs of building the wall, making other required fixes to its waste pond area and eventually creating a salt “cap” to seal it. This spring, according to the EPA, the company missed an April 8 deadline to “appropriately adjust” the amount of its financial assurance based on updated cost estimates.
On May 22, the company informed the Utah Department of Environmental Quality that work on the retrofitted waste pond — including the submerged retaining wall — would not proceed on schedule, according to the EPA’s letter. The judge’s order appointing Curtis instructs him to comply with the consent decree and to “abate and remediate” any nuisance or trespass caused by the company. Before taking action, he must post a bond and file an oath that he will responsibly carry out his duties.
The company stopped magnesium production in September 2022, it has said in court documents, and equipment failures the previous year had curtailed production even earlier.citing dropping lithium prices. The company did not answer a question about whether the lithium mining added any water to the waste pond.
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