by Peter Mertz
RENO, the United States, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Environmental groups across the U.S. West left the Ninth District courthouse in Nevada this week still seeking relief, despite a judge's decision that a permit, to allow a massive lithium surface mine in a vast, pristine wilderness area, was bogus.
The proposed Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, located in northern Nevada on the Oregon border, sits atop the largest lithium deposit in the United States and one of the largest in the world.
"It was an unlikely decision and not consistent" with recent precedent, said John Hadder of the Great Basin Resource Watch, about this week's ruling by Miranda Mai Du, chief judge of the Ninth District.
Recent precedent was a May 2022 decision by an Arizona district court that snuffed out Rosemont Copper Company's mining plan to dig a large open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson, according to court records.
Like Thacker Pass, Rosemont owned valid mining rights on U.S. Forest Service (USFS) land where it would dig its proposed pit mine, but a federal judge also ruled the group's mining permit was invalid.
"In the Thacker Pass ruling, the judge merely remanded the decision back to the (BLM) agency for further analysis, but did not vacate the decision to approve the mine, which might possibly allow mining to move forward," Erik Molvar of the Western Watersheds Project told Xinhua on Thursday.
"On Thacker Pass, the identical situation exists, in that the lands slated to become tailings dumps similarly are not 'proven up' with known deposits of minerals," he added.
Judge Du agreed that Lithium Nevada and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) didn't have a legal mining permit, but told Lithium Nevada to go back and prove they had one. Meanwhile, mining operations are continuing, activists said.
In order for the permit to be validated, the BLM and Lithium Nevada must prove that valuable minerals "do not exist" under land that the mining group had slated to be a waste dump for millions of tons of tailings - a virtually impossible task to prove, according to environmentalists.
No time limit was set for Lithium Nevada's response, environmental groups are considering an appeal, and the decision was hailed as a "green light" by the company to start mining.
Shares of Vancouver-based Lithium America, the parent company, rose 10.3 percent in New York to close at 25.87 U.S. dollars on Tuesday after the ruling, and General Motors (GM) was reported before that it would conditionally agree to invest 650 million U.S. dollars in Lithium Americas in a deal that would give GM exclusive access to the first phase of mining operations.
According to the project's developers, "the judge rejected claims that the mining will cause unnecessary harm to the local sage population and habitat, as well as harm to groundwater aquifers and air quality," KTVN News2 Reno reported Wednesday.
The lithium miners also told the media Tuesday "erroneously" that "the ruling confirms the permitting process for Thacker Pass was conducted thoroughly and responsibly and results in there being no impediment to commencing construction," News2 noted - not mentioning it still has one significant hurdle to jump before it gets final approval.
Moreover, the Joe Biden administration was reported that it believed the mine is key to producing raw materials for electric vehicle (EV) batteries to help speed the nation's transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
According to Lithium Nevada Corporation's Plans of Operation, the 41-year project would create a large open pit mine some 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometers) long by about a half a mile (0.8 kilometers) wide and remove up to 17.2 million tons of rock and ore per year.
Lithium's plan said direct surface disturbance would total 5,694 acres (23.04 square kilometers) with a project size totaling 17,933 acres (72.57 square kilometers), would require an on-site sulfuric acid plant processing up to 5,800 tons of acid per day and consume 1.7 billion gallons (64.3 billion liters) of water per year.
Environmental groups said the potential damage to the ecosystem is "incalculable," which will result in the permanent extinction of several endangered animal species, and will destroy land used by Native American groups for centuries.
Molvar called the Thacker Pass ruling "strangely inconsistent" with the Rosemont precedent, because in Rosemont, "the courts vacated the entire decision to approve the mine, being predicated on the violation of the 1872 Mining Law," which froze mining activities in their tracks.
"Our hearts are heavy hearing the decision that Judge Du did not revoke the permits for the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine," Wildlands Defense Public Lands Director Katie Fite said in a press release.
"Indigenous people's sacred sites should not be at the expense of the climate crisis the U.S. faces. Destroying Peehee Mu'huh is like cultural genocide," said the People of Red Mountain, an Indigenous Land and Culture group, who adamantly oppose the project.
Fite pointed the finger of blame at the BLM and the Biden administration who "can't see through the greenwashing of a project that will demolish sage grouse habitat, permanently dewater desert springs, imperil rare spring snails, and destroy important cultural sites," she said. ■