Proposed Lithium Mine Delights EV Enthusiasts But Troubles Some Environmental Groups – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

It isn’t easy being green. Last year, a study published in the journal Science Advances claimed that there was enough lithium — as much as 40 million metric tons — in the McDermitt Caldera, a volcanic area on the border between Nevada and Oregon, to make enough lithium-ion batteries to power as many as 370,000 battery electric cars a year for 20 years. The amount of lithium in the so-called Rhyolite Ridge is nearly double the size of the lithium deposits in the Bolivian salt flats, which contain an estimated 23 million metric tons of lithium.

“If you believe their back of the envelope estimation, this is a very, very significant deposit of lithium,” Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven University who was not involved in the study, told Chemistry World. “It could change the dynamics of lithium globally, in terms of price, security of supply, and geopolitics.” That is a lot to put on a pile of dirt in Nevada, but if we want to see supplies of lithium that do not come from China increase, this could be a discovery of monumental proportions.

According to Futurism, most of the world’s richest lithium stores are found in brine, but the McDermitt Caldera’s lithium, particularly in its southern portion in Nevada in an area called Thacker Pass, is locked up in clay. The caldera formed after a massive magma eruption approximately 16.4 million years ago, dredging up large quantities of lithium and other metals. A lake eventually formed in the caldera, which deposited a layer of sediment spiced with lithium that today is over 600 feet deep. The result is a clay called smectite. Eventually, as volcanic activity heated up again, hot brine containing additional lithium was driven up into the existing smectite, infusing it with even more lithium. Now the clay is no longer just smectite, but a uniquely lithium-rich amalgam known as illite. “They seem to have hit the sweet spot where the clays are preserved close to the surface, so they won’t have to extract as much rock, yet it hasn’t been weathered away yet,” Borst said.

This is good news for miners who want to extract lithium from the illite because is should be easier to separate from the clay. In addition, the deposits are mostly concentrated in one spot at the southern tip of Thacker Pass, which limits the area impacted by mining. But nothing is easy. The extraction of lithium can emit vast amounts of CO2, contaminate groundwater with dangerous heavy metals, and use large quantities of fossil fuels. The environmental toll shouldn’t be overlooked in the rush to green transportation infrastructure, Futurism says. Indeed, lithium mining in Argentina by Chinese companies has caused a great deal of controversy between those anxious to create new job opportunities and others who want to preserve the way of life for native people.

Lithium And The Environment

The Rhyolite Ridge project has been mired in controversy for many years. Conservationists have tried to block mining in the area, believing it would violate environmental laws. They are joined by Native American activists, as Thacker Pass is considered sacred by a local tribe because it is the site of a massacre of Paiute people by the 1st Nevada Cavalry on September 12, 1865, when up to 50 Native Americans were killed, including women and children. The Paiute people consider Thacker Pass a sacred site because of its historical significance and because it is a place for traditional activities like hunting, gathering, and Native ceremonies.

That all puts the Biden administration in a difficult spot. On one hand, it has made equity for Native peoples a cornerstone of its environmental and economic policies, especially as they relate to incentives provided by the Inflation Reduction Act. On the other hand, creating US-based supply chains to drive the EV revolution forward is also a top priority for the administration. You might say the two policies have irreconcilable differences.

Despite those differences, the Biden administration has just approved a mining permit requested by Ioneer, an Australian mining company that plans to extract lithium from the Thacker Pass area. “The Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine project is essential to advancing the clean energy transition and powering the economy of the future,” said Acting Deputy Interior Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis in a statement. “This project and the process we have undertaken demonstrates that we can pursue responsible critical mineral development here in the United States, while protecting the health of our public lands and resources.”

An Endangered Species

But Ioneer hasn’t crossed the finish line yet. That area is apparently the only place in the world where a little 6-inch-tall flower called Tiehm’s buckwheat grows. Fewer than 30,000 of the plants remain in Nevada in eight areas that combined cover 10 acres (4 hectares) — an area equal to about eight football fields. The US Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that the mine would not jeopardize the survival of the flowers after Ioneer agreed to changes to the mine’s footprint designed to alleviate concerns about harm to the flowers. Ioneer said that it will set aside 719 acres to protect the endangered wildflower.

Fish and Wildlife said the project, including the infrastructure and waste rock dump, will come within 15 feet (5 meters) of the buckwheat and result in the loss of some of its designated critical habitat that is home to neighboring bees and other pollinators integral to its reproduction. But it concluded the operation will cause no direct disturbance to individual plants and that reclamation, mitigation, and monitoring promised in the blueprint should provide necessary protections for it to coexist with the nearby open pit mine.

The Guardian reports that some environmentalists claimed after the announcement that the final approval for the mine was a politically motivated violation of multiple US laws, including the Endangered Species Act. The Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement: “Litigation is now the only way [to] stop the Rhyolite Ridge Mine.” Patrick Donnelly, the center’s Great Basin director, said, “We need lithium for the energy transition, but it can’t come with a price tag of extinction.” He added that the Biden administration “is abandoning its duty to protect endangered species like Tiehm’s buckwheat and it’s making a mockery of the Endangered Species Act. We’ve been fighting to save Tiehm’s buckwheat for six years and we’re not giving up now,” he added.

The Takeaway

There is no way to reconcile all the competing interests here. The Native people have been kicked around by the federal government for centuries and deserve to have their claim that the land is sacred to them honored. We are in complete agreement that lithium mining should not lead to the loss of a plant that is on the endangered species list. And we also recognize that finding sources of lithium in the US is vital to our national interests. The Fish and Wildlife determination will no doubt be challenged in the courts, where the latest decisions of the US Supreme Court that abandoned the so-called Chevron Doctrine put all agency actions at risk of not passing judicial muster.

Most industrial activities are messy. We want our electric cars but don’t want to know too much about how they are manufactured. Ioneer anticipates the Thacker Pass mine will be operational in 2028, but that assumes the courts don’t overturn the decision to issue a mining permit to Ioneer. As my old Irish grandmother liked to say, “There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.”