Nevada’s Lithium Could Help Save the Earth. But What Happens to Nevada?

Magazine|Nevada’s Lithium Could Help Save the Earth. But What Happens to Nevada?

Few Americans follow the nation’s lithium-mining industry as closely as Patrick Donnelly. Since 2021, he has set up 30 or so Google Alerts for variations on the word “lithium,” and he uses the findings to populate an online map of projects across the West. It is so useful that one industry insider has referred to it as “an investor’s handbook.”

This is paradoxical: Donnelly, who works at an environmental nonprofit called the Center for Biological Diversity, is one of the industry’s most vigilant watchdogs. The true spirit of his monitoring and mapping efforts comes through in a Twitter exchange he had with one mining firm, Rover Critical Minerals, a few years ago. In November 2022, he noticed an alert for a Rover project in southern Nevada, but he couldn’t find any information about its location. He decided to message Rover on Twitter. “In all of your materials, you never actually state where your Let’s Go Lithium project is located,” he wrote. “I’d like to add it to my lithium tracker map.”

The proposed mine, the company replied, would be in Pahrump, Nev., a town where Donnelly did his grocery shopping. But a month passed before a different alert revealed the project’s precise location: the edge of Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, a beloved and biodiverse wetland not far from where Donnelly lived.

He messaged the company again. “Just saw your map,” the message began. “I would abandon that project right now, because you stand zero, and I mean zero, chance of getting it permitted.” He ended, “No chance that mine moves forward.”

The company wrote back. “We believe otherwise. We are well outside any area of environmental concern.”

On Christmas Eve, Donnelly wrote one last time, calling Rover clueless. “Your mine is sitting on a vast carbonate aquifer system which sustains literally dozens of aquatic, endemic species protected under the Endangered Species Act. You won’t even make it to permitting. The agencies will laugh in your face. And if they don’t, we will bury you with litigation. If you think Ioneer has had a hard time with us,” he continued — referring to the Australian company whose proposed lithium mine triggered litigation over its potential threat to a species of buckwheat — “you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is my home.”