Nevada Thacker Pass lithium mine draws opposition from tribes

Tribal activists in Nevada are pushing back against a massive lithium mine they say will imperil their traditional ways and have environmental impacts severe enough to put it nearly on par with fossil fuels.

The developers of the Thacker Pass open-pit mine, Lithium Americas, promises to power the facility with steam derived by converting molten sulfur into sulfuric acid. That will “generate carbon-free power for the processing facilities,” North American operations president Alexi Zawadzki said on the mining company’s site. Building a sulfuric acid plant at the site will reduce the number of trucks on the road, he added.

Lithium Americas also promised the nearby Fort McDermitt tribe, via written contract, that it would hire locally, providing job training and other benefits, and build a community center including a preschool and playground. That won approval of many tribal leaders. More than two dozen federally recognized tribes and bands are located in Nevada.

But the Thacker Pass mine — like similar mines operating, under construction or proposed around the world — could come at a terrible environmental price, one that many opponents feel outweighs the supposed environmental benefits of the cars and other battery-powered devices the compounds are used in.

A sticking point for those opposed is the billions of gallons of groundwater that the mine will consume, and the contamination and debris that will be left behind.

“Lithium mines and this whole push for renewable energy — the agenda of the Green New Deal — is what I like to call green colonialism,″ said 25-year-old Daranda Hinkey, a member of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, and one leader of a group that calls itself People of Red Mountain. “It’s going to directly affect my people, my culture, my religion, my tradition.”

The mine will also desecrate the site commemorating a massacre of Hinkey’s ancestors by U.S. Cavalry after the Civil War, she said.

Nonetheless, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous person to serve in the position, told The Associated Press that the mine must go on. It has also been heralded by the Biden Administration as a cornerstone of the country’s green energy policy.

“The need for our clean energy economy to move forward is definitely important,” Haaland said. “It’s our job to make sure we’re doing things according to the science, to the law.”

With News Wire Services