It is located inside a massive extinct volcano, Thacker Pass lithium The deposit is the largest known source of lithium in the United States. And once your Lithium Nevada open-pit miner is up and running, it’s like that is expected To net billions in revenue and millions in tax generation.
It would also destroy Peehee Mu’huh, a site sacred to the Fort McDermitt tribe, destroying the local environment, displacing farmers and ranchers in the area, said John Hader, director of Great Basin Resource Watch (GBRW), a mining watch group. , for The Epoch Times.
Although, earlier this year, Thacker Pass lithium permits my king The project was approved on a fast-track schedule.
money talks
Exact estimates vary, but it is generally agreed that the electric vehicle (EV) market will be valuable trillions thus. And since most electric vehicles rely on lithium-ion batteries, mining this element is profitable, to say the least — some Estimates Putting the value at $94.4 billion by 2025.
However, at the moment, the United States is highly dependent on China for minerals, which is something the Biden administration is managing He confessed It was an economic and national security threat.
Hence, President Joe Biden Orientation The United States to increase domestic mineral production to combat the threat and take advantage of the electric car boom. Enter the Lithium Nevada Corp. (LNC) and Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass.
Originally discovered in 1975, Thacker Pass is located in Humboldt County in northern Nevada and is estimated to contain 3.1 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent. 3.1 million tons, equivalent to more than 6.8 billion pounds.
Importantly, once fully operational, Thacker Pass will produce 60,000 tons per year (tpa), which is roughly enough to produce 6 million electric vehicles per year.
In December 2020, the LNC issued a final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which advertiser That Lithium Nevada plans to “build and operate an open-ended lithium mine”.
Some traces found by EIS included Contaminating groundwater with above-acceptable levels of antimony, arsenic, sulfates, and total dissolved solids (TDS), destroying 5,695 acres, and lowering the groundwater table by 10 feet. Hadar indicated that these estimates are conservative because the analysis was done by the mining contractor.
Notably, EIS revealed that the mine would desecrate 52 historical or prehistoric sites, but as a positive, it would generate more than $8.2 million in taxes in Phase One (initial construction and operation) and in Phase Two (complete operation), approximately $9.2 Million dollars in tax generation.
After EIS, Thacker Pass permits from the Nevada Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA). It was in spite of the severe trauma from the community and the Native American tribes in the area, something Hader claims to be unnatural.
“The federal NEPA process was completed in less than a year. Normally, the NEPA process takes 3-5 years if all is well and there are few or no public concerns,” Hader said.
“Mining operations are extremely destructive to the environment and disruptive to neighboring communities, so the process of allowing mining must be done carefully and prudently through careful analysis of environmental impacts and mitigation methods.”
Society competes with its destruction
Seeking to protect their land and resist LNC development, ranchers in northern Nevada and organizations such as GBRW filed lawsuits, alleging that both the BLM and LNC expedited approval procedures, ignored environmental impact, and violated the rights of the plaintiff.
In Bartell v. Esther M McCullough / Bureau of Land Management, plaintiff Edward Bartell pointing to that his farm held several federal grazing permits and had private ranch land and water rights threatened by the lithium mine.
The mine could affect their ability to farm and raise livestock in the area. The air quality will decline, there will be constant traffic of trucks transporting materials to and from the mine, and water scarcity will likely increase. There is a distinct possibility that these farmers and ranchers will eventually sell their property to the mine, and family farming in the area will end.
In the Western Watershed Project, Great Basin Resource Watch, Basin and Range Watch, and Wildlands Defense v. U.S. Department of the Interior/U.S. Bureau of Land Management, attorneys for the plaintiffs advertiser:
“In the rush to implement the project, the defendants violated federal environmental laws and swept the mine’s dangerous environmental impacts under the rug.”
Likewise, Hader asserted, “Lithium mining is not the only climate solution being promoted as. Mining… is a driver of climate change. … There is more to climate change than just carbon emissions. It is land use change, loss of Biodiversity, the loss of the system to repair itself under stress.
“Mining exacerbates all of these other aspects of climate change while also removing large swaths of healthy environments that act as carbon sinks. Many of these mine sites will never be recovered and will be a toxic legacy for the mining industry on the landscape.”
In an interesting development, the LNC’s plan to operate an open-pit mine means the Thacker Pass project will use the same mining technologies as coal deposits. will also build up 132.588 tons per year of greenhouse gas emissions during the second phase. For comparison, a typical passenger car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to Environmental Protection Agency.
However, unlike coal, once extracted, the clay-like lithium ore must undergo a new acid leaching process to separate the lithium from the clay. according to LNCLithium ore must be “crushed, screened, and then conveyed as a slurry to a filter chamber where sulfuric acid is added to bind the ore and free the lithium from the slurry.”
This requirement, also noted in EIS, will have a significant environmental impact, Hader claims.
The sulfuric acid plant will be a source of air pollution - particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide along with the usual VOCs. Once the ore has been filtered and the lithium extracted, what is left is the tailings that will be acidic and a potential source of water pollution for an indefinite period of time - perhaps a hundred years or more. “
Additionally, according to the LNC ReportAmong other things, the Thacker Pass lithium mine will require 2,600 acres of water per year in the first phase and 5,200 acres per year in the second phase. That’s approximately 847 million gallons of water per year, and approximately 1.7 billion gallons of water when the mine is operating at full capacity.
The water will come from the Quinn-Production well in the Orovada Subarea Hydrographic Basin which, Hadder pointing to Out to The Epoch Times and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, 30,271 square foot acres have already been accumulated annually.
Historical shock, review
Environmental impact is one thing to consider with a Thacker Pass, but it’s not the only one.
On June 16, the National Conference of American Indians (NCAI), the oldest and largest national organization of American Indian and Alaska Native Tribal Governments, adopted Precision Titled “Supporting Indigenous Safety Through Opposition to the Human Camps of the Thacker Pass,” which details one of their reasons for their opposition to the Thacker Pass mine.
Just 15 miles from the reservation border of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone tribes, Peehee Mu’huh is a sacred site with a bloody history.
From time immemorial, the people of Payot and Shoshone looked after and lived in Bihi Mohuh and its peasants. But in 1865, while the hunters were away, a group of American cavalry slipped on the unprotected women, children, and old men.
When the fishermen is backThey could smell something rotten. Soon they encountered a massacre, their old men, women and children lying in the brush of old sagebrush with their guts dragged across the landscape in the crescent-shaped section of the corridor looking from the east. This is how the area acquired the aboriginal name: Peehee Mu’huh, or “rotten moon,” explains Fort McDermitt Paiute Shoshone, Daranda Hinke.
Moreover, the cause of the massacre according to oral tradition and NCAIis that the United States wants the region’s natural resources.
Since the massacre, the people of the Payot and Shoshone tribes have considered Beihe Mohuh a sacred burial site and a spiritual site and have honored it with festivities.
in official statement In opposition to the mine, the Red Mountain People, a group of Native Americans formed to protect their ancestral land, stated that “to build a lithium mine over this massacre site at Peehee Mu’huh would be tantamount to building a lithium mine over Pearl Harbor or Arlington National Cemetery.”
So far, legal efforts and decisions have failed to prevent LCN’s lithium mine from moving forward with its plan to destroy Peehee Mu’huh.
Peehee Mu’huh is Paiute. In English, it has been translated to Thacker Pass.
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Katie covers energy and politics for The Epoch Times. Before beginning her career as a journalist, Katie worked proudly in the Air Force as an Airborne Operations Technician at JSTARS. She received her degree in Analytical Philosophy and a minor in Cognitive Studies from the University of Colorado. Katie’s writing has appeared on CNSNews.com, The Maverick Observer, The Motley Fool, First Quarter Finance, The Cheat Sheet, and Investing.com. Email her at [email protected]