A regional environmental group accused the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management on Thursday of colluding with phosphate-mining companies in southern Idaho to cover up decades of serious pollution.  The result, said Marv Hoyt, the Idaho director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, is that mining continues to leach selenium into streams and the aquifer - while 17 Superfund sites from past mining go untouched.  Lynn Ballard, spokesman for the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and BLM, denied there was any collusion with the mining industry to cover up the pollution.  "We've never operated that way," he said.  Mining for phosphate exposes rocks rich in selenium, which, once exposed to rain and snow, flows into streams and underground aquifers. It can build up in plants, reaching high concentrations that can kill livestock and wildlife and harm the people who eat them.  The Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Caribou Clean Water Partnership released a report written by a retired federal hydrologist, who pored over thousands of documents obtained from federal agencies through the Freedom of Information Act.  Edgar Imhoff, the hydrologist, during a press conference via telephone Thursday, said he was astounded by the toxic levels of selenium found as long as two decades ago in streams near phosphate mines north and east of Soda Springs. "Given the dangers, the mining company and federal agencies had to be aware they had a serious problem on their hands," Imhoff said, referring to the owner of one of three active phosphate mines, Boise-based The J.R. Simplot Co.  Hoyt said the documents showed the federal agencies didn't just fumble their jobs. "This was something a lot more deliberate that just dropping the ball," he said.  The documents did not reveal secret deals, but rather a pattern of downplaying or obscuring the gravity of the pollution, Imhoff said.

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