Thread by @themadstone

#Longread by me in ⁦@grist⁩ today: How a fight over Nevada’s lithium mines could reshape America’s electric car future.

This is a story that about an environmental battle that is going to be coming again and again if we don’t reform mining laws: grist.org/climate/the-we…

Lil' thread on some highlights:

Nevada has a lot of lithium, and America needs a lot to meet its electrification goals.

The Biden admin is well aware. Last month it issued a statement calling for America to "better leverage its sizable lithium reserves" whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

Sounds like a win-win for jobs and the environment, right?

Here's the problem: Mining is inherently destructive. To avoid harming biodiversity and creating local conflicts, mines need to be cited very, very carefully and undergo to rigorous environmental review.

But that's not what's happening with these Nevada lithium mines, according to locals and environmental watchdogs.

The first, at Thacker Pass, was reviewed & approved by the Trump administration in less than 12 months. It was explicitly fast tracked as part of a covid recovery EO

Now it's facing two federal lawsuits: One by a local rancher, who claims that the mining company & BLM misled the public about how much water the mine will use; another by conservation orgs who say BLM ignored its own biodiversity plans in its "rush" to approve the project.

These groups allegations are supported by comments on the project submitted by Nevada's department of wildlife, which warned that mine would "have permanent ramifications on the area’s wildlife and habitat resources".

The EPA--Trump's EPA!-- meanwhile, submitted comments pointing out that the mine would lead to severe & unmitigated groundwater pollution.

The Thacker pass region is a biodiversity hotspot home to pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, mule deer, ESA-listed trout, endemic snails found nowhere else, and "priority habitat management area" for the federally protected sage grouse.

So yea, the issues are serious. But again, this mine could produce a lot of lithium--up to 66,000 tons a year, which is nearly double what the entire EV & battery sector used in 2020.

Further south, another lithium mine at Rhyolite Ridge hasn't gotten its BLM stamp of approval yet. But a similar conservation battle is heating up.

In this case, the exact spot where company Ioneer wants to mine is home to the entire global population of a rare wildflower.

In January, more than 100 scientists wrote Biden warning him that this mine would drive the plant, called Tiehm's buckwheat, to extinction.

The mining company says it has a plan to transplant the species elsewhere, but there's no proof that can be done.

biologicaldiversity.org/species/plants…

Ultimately, conservation advocates told me, to prevent more conflicts like this the Biden administration needs to reform the 1872 mining law that allows companies to stake claims to public land, pay no royalties for its use, and dump their mining waste on site

Otherwise, the US is heading into "conflict after conflict for renewable energy– and electric cars–related mining,” according to Kelly Fuller of the Western Watershed Alliance.

John Hadder, executive director of the environmental justice group Great Basin Resource Watch, put it this way:

“There is a lot of pressure to extract materials for what we consider to be the new energy economy. But we have to do it in a way which isn’t business as usual."

/fin