By james art RENO, Nev. (AP) — In a first under President Joe Biden, a federal permit for a new lithium mine has been approved for a Nevada project essential to his clean energy agenda, despite pledges by environmentalists to sue the plan, which they say that will lead to the extinction of an endangered wild flower.
The mine of Ioneer Ltd. will help speed production of a key mineral in the production of electric vehicle batteries at the center of Biden’s push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, administration officials said Thursday in Reno.
Acting Home Secretary Laura Daniel-Davies said it was “essential to progressing the clean energy transition and powering the economy of the future”.
“The process we’ve taken demonstrates that we can pursue responsible critical mineral development here in the United States while protecting the health of our public lands and resources,” she said.
Construction on the six-year Rhyolite Ridge mine is set to begin next year in the high desert midway between Reno and Las Vegas, Australia-based Ioneer said.
Production is scheduled to begin in 2028 at the mine, which should produce enough lithium for 370,000 vehicles a year for more than two decades, officials said. Global demand for lithium is expected to grow sixfold by 2030 compared to 2020.
“I can say with absolute confidence that there are few deposits in the world that are as impactful as Rhyolite Ridge,” Ioneer Executive Chairman James Callaway said Thursday.
“Today’s approval of Ioneer’s federal permit is the culmination of countless hours of work and a testament to the dedication of our remarkable team to the development and construction of one of the nation’s most sustainable mining projects,” he said
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management issued the permit after the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded — after consultation with the bureau required under the Endangered Species Act — that the mine would not threaten the survival of Tiehm’s buckwheat.
The service added the 6-inch (15-centimeter) yellow-and-cream-flowered wildflower to the U.S. Endangered Species List on Dec. 14, 2022, citing mining as the biggest threat to its survival.
The bureau initiated the permitting process for the mine five days later. The agencies say Ioneer’s subsequent changes to the mine’s footprint mitigated concerns about potential damage to the flower.
Environmentalists said Thursday that the mine’s final approval was a politically motivated violation of multiple U.S. laws. The Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement that “lawsuits are now the only way (to) stop the Rhyolite Ridge mine.”
“We need lithium for the energy transition, but it can’t come at the cost of extinction,” said Patrick Donnelly, the center’s Great Basin director. He said the Biden administration is “abandoning its duty to protect endangered species like Thiem’s buckwheat and making a mockery of the Endangered Species Act.”
Fewer than 30,000 of the plants remain in Nevada in the only place they are known to exist in the world in eight subpopulations that together cover 10 acres (4 hectares)—an area the size of about eight football fields.
The USFWS said the project — including the infrastructure and landfill — would come within 15 feet (5 meters) of the buckwheat and result in the loss of some of its designated critical habitat, which is home to neighboring bees and other pollinators, an integral part of from her reproduction.
But the service said the operation would not directly disturb the individual plants and that the reclamation, mitigation and monitoring promised in the plan should provide the necessary protections to coexist with the open-pit mine, which is deeper than the length of a football field.
Opponents of the project say it’s the latest example of the Biden administration’s callous behavior toward U.S. protections for native wildlife, rare species and sacred tribal lands in the name of slowing climate change by reducing dependence on fossil fuels and strengthening national security by easing dependence on foreign sources of critical minerals.
“We’ve been fighting to save Tiehm Buckwheat for six years and we’re not going to give up now,” Donnelly said.
Nevada is home to the only existing lithium mine in the U.S. Another is currently under construction near the Oregon line 220 miles (354 kilometers) north of Reno. That Thacker Pass Lithium Americas mine, which was approved in the final days of former President Donald Trump’s administration, has weathered multiple legal challenges from conservationists and Native American tribes who said it would destroy lands they consider sacred, where their ancestors were massacred by American troops in 1865.
Scott Sonner, Associated Press