Biden Agenda, Lithium Mine, Tribes, Green Clash in Reno

RENO, Nevada (AP) — A high-stakes, years-long legal battle over a proposed giant lithium mine in Nevada resumed on Thursday, mining company lawyers, the U.S. agency that approved it said. , ranchers, tribes, conservationists, businesses.

U.S. District Judge Miranda Du has ruled in the past to grant temporary injunctions sought by tribal leaders who claim that the mine site is on sacred grounds where their ancestors were slaughtered by U.S. cavalry in 1865. I have been rejected twice in one year.

But Thursday’s hearing in her Reno courtroom was the first hearing on the actual merits of the case, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Arizona’s ruling voiding federal recognition of a copper mine. After endorsing it, it will set the legal landscape going forward with a new twist. .

This potentially precedent decision casts doubt on the scope of influence of the Mining Act of 1872 and the disposition of waste rock from lithium mines in the high desert 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the Oregon line. can affect. all over the country.

Lithium Nevada and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Address Growing Demand for Lithium to Make Electric Vehicle Batteries, a Key Part of President Joe Biden’s Push to Accelerate the Shift from Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy The project, which sits on top of an ancient volcano, is important to do so. .

Nevada ranchers and conservation groups say they will destroy dwindling habitats for sage grouse, Lahontan cutthroat trout, pronghorn antelope and golden eagles.

Wildlands Defense’s Katie Veit, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit seeking an injunction on the nearly 200-mile (321-kilometer) soccer pass project, said, “Along with neighboring Oregon’s wild land, undeveloped wormwood. It constitutes one of the last big blocks in the ocean of Northeast of Reno.

“We need a smart energy future that shifts the economy from fossil fuels to renewable energy without sacrificing rare species in the process,” said Greta Anderson, deputy director of the Western Basin Project. I’m here. under the Endangered Species Act.

BLM has moved quickly to approve the project in the final days of the Trump administration in 2021. The Biden administration continues to embrace mining as part of the president’s “clean” energy agenda aimed at fighting climate change.

Demand for lithium is expected to triple between 2020 and 2030, and Lithium Nevada says its project is the only one in the planning stage that will help meet demand.

Opponents who initially sued to block the mine in February 2021 want Judge Du to revoke BLM’s approval of the plan. Company officials and government lawyers want her to back them so construction can begin this year.

In addition to cultural and environmental concerns about potential impacts, a new Ninth Circuit ruling that shut down the Arizona mines in July and then refused to review that decision in September was a Nevada trial. floating in the mind of an official.

“I am interested in the extent to which[the case]determines the outcome of this case,” Du said in a court order ahead of Thursday’s hearing.

A San Francisco-based appeals court has ruled that the Forest Service lacked authority to approve Rosemont Copper’s plan to dispose of waste rock on land adjacent to a mine it hoped to mine in a national forest southeast of Tucson. upheld the Arizona ruling that

The service and BLM have long interpreted the Mining Act of 1872 as giving the same mineral rights to such land.

The Ninth Circuit agreed with U.S. Judge James Soto in ruling that the U.S. Forest Service approved Rosemont’s plans in 2019. He concluded that Rosemont had assumed under the Mining Act that he had “a valid mining claim on the 2,447 acres he proposed to occupy on that waste rock.”