BOISE, Idaho - The Canadian company behind a project to create the nation's largest cobalt mine in the mountains of central Idaho has hired a mining lobbyist and a public relations firm to sway lawmakers, agencies and the public on its economic benefits.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Formation Capital Corp. has worked since 1993 on the project 21 miles east of Salmon. It hopes to mine cobalt worth $46 million annually, based on estimated production and today's prices. The metal is used in hybrid cars, fighter jets and gas turbines, among other things.

The Gallatin Group, whose consultants include Cecil Andrus, a former Idaho governor and U.S. interior secretary, and Peter Skamser, a longtime Boise-based mining industry lobbyist, has been hired to help.

Formation would extract 800 tons of rock daily from beneath public land, calling it an environmentally safe way to cut U.S. dependence on relatively unstable countries. America currently imports about 79 percent of its cobalt from restive regions, including Africa and Russia.

Still, conservation groups, including Western Watersheds Project and the Idaho Conservation League, are wary, in part for historical reasons: On land adjacent to Formation's proposal sits a 100-year-old cobalt claim that since 1995 has cost Noranda Mining Inc., another Canadian mining outfit, and three other firms $60 million to clean contamination that killed thousands of salmon in nearby creeks.

"Cobalt is on the list of U.S. strategic metals - it's very important," said Batric Pesic, a professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Idaho. But "mining in the U.S. is very tricky," Pesic said. "You're always going against public perception. Mining companies can't do it by themselves."

That's why The Gallatin Group and Skamser were hired.

"It's looking at the process of educating the public," Skamser told The Associated Press. "We'll talk to the congressional offices, the (Idaho) Department of Commerce, the governor and legislative leadership, to keep them up to date on what's going on. Nobody likes to be surprised."

Later this month, federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, are to begin reviewing an analysis of the project by the U.S. Forest Service.

The public will likely be able to weigh in starting in January, but the agency won't make a final decision on the mine until next August at the earliest, said Ray Henderson, a Forest Service minerals specialist.

The new mine, if permitted, would disturb only 150 acres, said Jerry Hamilton, its environmental coordinator. Its shaft would spiral downwards, preventing wastewater from spilling out. A reclamation bond for the project could top $15 million, Forest Service officials said.

"We're aware of our neighbor," said Rick Honsinger, a spokesman at Formation's Vancouver offices, of the contaminated adjacent mine. "But the neighbor's mine and our mine are two completely different operations. The most toxic thing on that hill is going to be diesel fuel."

If the mine wins approval, the company promises more than $11 million in annual wages for more than 180 workers, in an economically depressed region of the state where unemployment was about double Idaho's 3.6 percent October rate.