It’s the latest development in several years of litigation and back-and-forth over the Sevier Playa Potash Project, which would give Peak Minerals 124,000-acres of mineral rights. The proposal was originally approved by the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, in 2019.

Potash is a trade name for minerals with potassium used in fertilizer, but also used to manufacture other products like soap, glass and synthetic rubber. It’s often found in the brines of terminal basin lakes, like the Sevier Lake, a mostly dry lakebed in Millard County.

The project was initially approved under the first Trump administration in 2019, but in 2023 the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance sued to stop it, arguing the BLM did not analyze all the environmental impacts and failed to consider alternatives that would be less environmentally disruptive.

The BLM and SUWA then moved to jointly dismiss the lawsuit, after Peak Minerals submitted a revised mining plan. But the case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning SUWA could re-file its complaint.

In June, the BLM approved Peak Minerals’ new plan — and on Thursday, SUWA filed a lawsuit in federal court, arguing the approval did not consider all environmental harms, including impacts to groundwater, migratory birds, air quality and dark night skies. The group is also alleging the BLM violated federal law when it authorized the project through a Determination of NEPA Adequacy, which relies on existing environmental reviews rather than conducting a new, more lengthy analysis.

“By failing to conduct the required environmental analysis for a project of this magnitude, BLM has rubber-stamped a decision to irreversibly alter the extremely wild and remote nature of Utah’s West Desert,” said Hanna Larsen, a staff attorney for SUWA, in a statement. “The impacts of turning Sevier Lake into an industrial zone will destroy important habitat for migratory birds, ruin incredibly dark night skies, and imperil groundwater resources for decades to come.”

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the project in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Peak Minerals said the project will bring economic benefits to the area, aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive order to ramp up mineral production, and offers a sustainable supply of domestically-produced potash.

“Once up and running, it will help supply North America with much-needed potash while replacing imports that have large carbon footprints, doing so at the absolute lowest cost,” said Peak Minerals CEO Dean Pekeski, in a statement after the project was approved in June.

Peak Minerals would dig trenches to expose the brine and collect water from precipitation and the Sevier River. The brine extracted from the Sevier Playa sediments would then be concentrated by solar evaporation, according to BLM documents, then sent to a processing facility to be refined.

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.