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Match Is Still a Long-Term Catch
“The reality,” said McKinney, standing at the site amid old-growth sagebrush, “is that once this whole thing behind me goes and there’s a big hole there, everything leaves with it.”
‘Sacred locations’
From 1975 to 1987, Chevron USA began exploring the McDermitt Caldera in Thacker Pass, the crater of a dead volcano, in search of uranium. It found lithium.
A decade ago, with demand for lithium rising, Lithium Americas launched its own research on the site and started taking the needed steps for federal and state approval of a mine on public land. It says it also began outreach to the local community, assuring residents of northern Nevada it would be a good environmental steward while providing 1,000 jobs during construction and then 300 full-time jobs at the mine itself.
Asked about its contacts with Native American groups during the period the mine project was in development, Lithium Americas provided a list of dozens of meetings with local groups that included four separate in-person meetings with the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe between 2017 and 2020. No specific meetings with any other Native American groups are listed, though there are three events noted in Winnemucca, more than 50 miles from the mine site, where the Winnemucca Indian Colony is located.
In a statement, a Lithium Americas spokesperson said, “The benefits of our project, in particular jobs and economic development, will and should be felt in those communities, and we’ve remained committed to answering any inquiries about our development.”
Part of the approval process was getting the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, which owns the property, to conduct an environmental impact assessment. In addition to projecting the effects of the mine on air, water and soil, the bureau is required by federal law to ask nearby Native American groups about any potential risk to “significant religious, spiritual or sacred locations.”
In December 2019, the BLM sent letters to the leaders of the Fort McDermitt Tribe, the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, and the Winnemucca Indian Colony asking for any concerns about impact to sacred sites. The letters were certified, as shown in court filings, and the bureau requested return receipt, meaning it asked for confirmation, via email or postcard, that the letters had been delivered. The BLM published its final impact statement in December 2020.
Five days before the Trump administration left office, on Jan. 15, 2021, the BLM approved the Thacker Pass project. In a press release, Evans of Lithium Americas said the decision was “the culmination of over 10 years of hard work from the Thacker Pass team, as well as the BLM and other federal, state and local agencies, all of whom worked tirelessly to ensure their respective commitments to environmental stewardship and community engagement.”
Within four weeks, cattle rancher Edward Bartell filed suit in federal court against BLM, igniting a legal fight that continues to this day.
Bartell alleged that the impact statement had not accurately assessed the effect of the mine and its acid plant on an area with limited water. All of Nevada suffers from “severe drought” conditions, and the mine would use about 3,000 gallons of water per minute, according to the impact statement. Bartell said the mine would harm his water supply and ranch productivity and threaten trout and bird habitats. The government defended its assessement and methodologies and said it complied with protocols.
Environmental groups joined Bartell’s lawsuit, echoing his concerns about water use, pollution and habitat destruction, despite the climate benefits of green vehicles.
“The bottom line is that any mine, especially an open-pit mine, is going to obliterate the habitat that’s there,” said John Hadder, executive director of the Great Basin Resource Watch, a regional environmental organization. “There’s automatically a hit to the environment, which by definition makes it not green.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
