This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Conservationists seeking to head off a major expansion of mining on the Great Salt Lake are asking a court to require the state to give them a hearing.
So far the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands has refused to give an appeal hearing to Friends of the Great Salt, the Sierra Club and others, partly because they did not ask for it until a year after the division's August 2010 decision to approve the 43,000-acre expansion of Great Salt Lake Mineral Corp.'s fertilizer operation on the lake's north side.
The groups say they didn't ask for a hearing in a timely fashion because the state never informed them that it had made a decision.
"We want a chance to stand up and say, 'You need to do analysis before you can make a decision like this,' " said Joro Walker, an attorney for the conservation groups.
The state has said a decade-old Great Salt Lake management plan opened the areas in question to mineral development. The conservation groups contend that doesn't exempt the state from conducting an analysis of specific proposals, especially those this large.
The groups' lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Salt Lake County's 3rd District Court, seeks an injunction against the expansion and an administrative review from the state.
Brandon Loomis