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U.S. approves massive lithium mine in Nevada, overriding protests

Chad Yeftich, left, vice president of corporate development and external affairs at Ioneer, and Bernard Rowe, managing director at Ioneer, look at Tiehm’s buckwheat, a small, yellow flower that grows in lithium-rich Nevada soil, near by the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Mine Project site on Feb. 22 in Esmeralda County, Nevada. Rhyolite Ridge holds the largest known lithium and boron deposit in North America. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye)
By Maxine Joselow Washington Post

The Biden administration Thursday approved a massive lithium and boron mine in southern Nevada, overriding some environmentalists’ protests that it could drive an endangered wildflower to extinction.

The final approval of the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project underscores the tensions between two of President Joe Biden’s top environmental priorities: accelerating the nation’s transition to clean energy and combating a global biodiversity crisis.

In a final permit issued Thursday afternoon, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management found that the mine would not jeopardize the survival of Tiehm’s buckwheat, a rare, cream-colored wildflower that grows only on lithium- and boron-rich soil in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The agency noted that Australia-based Ioneer, the company behind the project, plans to protect roughly 719 acres designated as critical habitat for the wildflower.

“The Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine project is essential to advancing the clean energy transition and powering the economy of the future,” Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy interior secretary, said 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.”

But Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the conservation group plans to challenge the final permit in court. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service citied mining as the greatest threat to Tiehm’s buckwheat’s survival when the agency listed it under the Endangered Species Act in 2022; Donnelly said the suit will argue that the BLM violated the law in allowing the new mining operation to move forward.

“There’s this real question of how our bedrock environmental laws are going to hold up under the pressure of the energy transition,” Donnelly said. “The Endangered Species Act does not have carve-outs if we really, really want the minerals that are going to drive a species extinct.”

Lithium, much of which is mined outside of the United States, serves as a crucial component in electric-vehicle batteries and other green technologies. Rhyolite Ridge is expected to produce enough lithium for roughly 370,000 vehicles annually for more than two decades, according to Ioneer.

“I can say with absolute confidence there are few deposits in the world as impactful as Rhyolite Ridge,” Ioneer Executive Chairman James Calaway said Thursday.

Construction of the Rhyolite Ridge project is expected to begin next year in the desert between Reno and Las Vegas.

Boron, which the mine will also produce, has strong melting and bonding properties, and is used extensively in the production of glass and ceramics. It can also be used as a component in insecticides and cleaning products.

The mine is scheduled to become fully operational in 2028; it will employ up to 500 workers during construction and around 350 workers during operations, according to Ioneer.

The Biden administration has taken a flurry of steps to boost domestic mining for lithium and other critical minerals used in green technologies. On Thursday, the Treasury Department also finalized a rule making mines for critical minerals eligible for generous federal tax credits.