Nevada lithium mine wins final approval despite potential harm to endangered wildflower

RENO, Nev. — For the first time under President Joe Biden, a federal permit has been approved for a new lithium-boron mine for a Nevada project key to his clean energy agenda, despite conservationists’ vows to sue over the plan which they claim is a endangered wild flower to extinction.

The Ioneer Ltd mine will help speed production of a key mineral in the production of electric vehicle batteries that is central to Biden’s drive to cut greenhouse gas emissions, administration officials said Thursday in Reno.

Acting Deputy Interior Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said strengthening domestic lithium supplies “is essential to advancing the clean energy transition and boosting the economy of the future.”

“This project demonstrates how partnership and collaboration can effectively balance mineral production with the protection of vulnerable species and irreplaceable natural resources,” said Steve Feldgus, U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management.

In the works for nearly eight years, construction of the Rhyolite Ridge mine should begin next year in the high desert halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, Australia-based Ioneer said.

Production is expected to begin in 2028 at the mine, which should produce enough lithium for 370,000 vehicles per year for more than two decades, officials said.

It is unique because it includes a chemical processing facility that processes the lithium on site rather than having to ship it to China and then back to the US. Global demand for lithium is expected to be six times larger by 2030 than in 2020. The world’s largest producer of lithium is China, which currently processes the most lithium.

“I can say with absolute confidence that there are few deposits in the world that have the impact of Rhyolite Ridge,” said James Calaway, executive chairman of Ioneer.

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management issued the permit after the Fish and Wildlife Service (in consultation with the agency required under the Endangered Species Act) concluded that the mine would threaten the continued existence of Tiehm’s buckwheat would not endanger.

The agency added the 6-inch-tall wildflower with yellow and cream-colored blooms to the U.S. endangered species list on Dec. 14, 2022, citing mining as the biggest threat to its survival.

The agency started the permitting process for the mine five days later. The agencies say Ioneer’s subsequent changes to the mine’s footprint have allayed concerns about potential damage to the flour.

Environmentalists said the mine’s final approval was a politically motivated violation of multiple U.S. laws. An hour after the agency posted the formal decision approving the permit, the Center for Biological Diversity sent Interior Secretary Deb Haaland a 60-day notice that the group intended to file a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act Act.

“We need lithium for the energy transition, but we can’t put a price on it becoming extinct,” said Patrick Donnelly, director of Great Basin. He said the Biden administration “is failing in its duty to protect endangered species like Tiehm’s buckwheat and is making a mockery of the Endangered Species Act.”

Fewer than 30,000 of the plants remain in Nevada, in the only place in the world known to exist, spread across eight subpopulations covering 10 acres – an area equivalent to the size of approximately eight football fields.

USFWS said the project – including infrastructure and landfill – will come within five meters of the buckwheat and will result in the loss of some of the designated critical habitat, where neighboring bees and other pollinators are an integral part of its reproduction. .

But the agency said the operation will not cause direct disruption to individual plants and that the reclamation, mitigation and monitoring promised in the blueprint should provide the necessary protection to coexist with the open-pit mine that is deeper than the length of a football field.

“I don’t think the mine will lead to the extinction of Tiehm buckwheat at all,” said Bernard Rowe, CEO of Ioneer. “I think we’re now going to be part of the solution as we continue to provide significant resources … to ensure it doesn’t become extinct.”

Construction of the mine is expected to employ about 500 workers, with about 350 full-time employees when the mine is fully operational – a boon for small Esmeralda County with a population of about 1,000.

Esmeralda County Commissioner Ralph Keys said the rural county, now the least populated in Nevada, was the most populous during the gold and silver boom of the late 1800s.

“This is going to put us back on the map,” he said Thursday.

Opponents of the project say this is the latest example of the Biden administration’s trampling on U.S. protections of native wildlife and rare species. and sacred tribal lands in the name of slowing climate change by reducing dependence on fossil fuels and strengthening national security by reducing dependence on foreign sources of critical minerals.

Daniel-Davis denied environmentalists’ claims that the government is rushing to develop so-called “green energy” projects at the expense of greater risk to troubled species.

“The urgency of climate change and the need to transition to a clean energy economy have been central to everything we have been working on since day one in the Biden-Harris administration,” she said. “Does this make us look differently at projects like this or others that would support the transition to a clean energy economy? I have to say categorically: no.”

Nevada is home to the only existing lithium mine in the US. Another is currently under construction near the Oregon line, 220 miles north of Reno – Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass mine.