Tribune editorial: Experience shows that Utah must exert aggressive oversight of rare earth bonanza mine

This time, we are told, it will be different.

The discovery of an apparent rare earth bonanza near Utah Lake promises not only to help free the United States from the need to import materials necessary for 21st century green energy and machines, but also to do so with a minimal threat of air and water pollution.

Sounds great. But in a state hard-pressed to figure out what to do about the expensive toxic cauldron left by the US Magnesium operation, which sits hard by the Great Salt Lake, aggressive oversight will be necessary. And effective provisions for monitoring and clean-up must be made.

The apparent good news is the Silicon Ridge mine, run by an outfit called Ionic Minerals Technology — Ionic MT to its friends — has been identified less than 20 miles south of the Utah County Silicon Slopes area, home to many high-tech start-ups, and just west of Utah Lake.

According to its developers, the site contains large amounts of such substances as gallium, germanium, rubidium, cesium, halloysite and other stuff most of us haven’t heard of and can’t pronounce. It’s what we need to make everything from mobile phones to utility-scale solar energy installations, modern weapons systems to artificial intelligence data centers.

Getting all that domestically, not having to depend on China, will be a boon to green energy and high-tech developments hereabouts. And there is also reason to hope that, by developing these resources here, instead of elsewhere, American-level worker and environmental protections can be applied.

Which is why the process of developing Silicon Ridge must have the memories of US Magnesium looming over it.

That operation stopped producing magnesium in 2021. Its succession of owners have filed for bankruptcy twice, once in 2001 and again in September. It owes many millions of dollars in clean-up costs, royalties, back taxes, bank loans and other debts to, among others, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, Tooele County, and Wells Fargo Bank.

In 2015, a New York jury found a former owner of US Magnesium, billionaire Ira Rennert, liable for looting company cash for personal uses, including construction of what was said to be one of the world’s largest private residences. He was ordered to pay $213 million to company creditors.

Utah has revoked the magnesium operation’s license and is demanding that the company cover clean-up costs. But, with its revenues tanking and the complexities of bankruptcy proceedings, chances are high that the fiscal and technical burdens of cleaning up the highly toxic leavings of US Magnesium will fall upon Utah and/or national taxpayers.

The Silicon Ridge operation, we are assured, will not pose such a threat. The sought-after metals are said to be contained in clay, not rock, and so extraction won’t require explosives, the use of toxic chemicals or other things that left the US Magnesium site such a Augean mess.

Great. That means the developers of the mine won’t mind putting up an irrevocable bond of a value sufficient to clean up and reclaim the site as it operates and when it runs dry.

That, and substantial extraction royalties paid to the state along the way, should promise the people of Utah that someone else won’t be siphoning off all the profits while we taxpayers are left holding the poisonous bag.

Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.