Proposed Lithium Mine Delights EV Enthusiasts But Troubles Some Environmental Groups

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.

The Biden administration has just approved a mining permit requested by Ioneer, an Australian mining company. “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. 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.