Energy & Environment

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The Big Story

Lithium mining project approved despite concerns over wildflower

The Biden administration this week gave final approval to a Nevada lithium mining project that officials say could supply enough of the mineral for nearly 370,000 electric vehicles.

The approved project was the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron mine, which the administration said will be a boon for the mineral supply chain and support U.S. jobs.

“The Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine project is essential to advancing the clean energy transition and powering the economy of the future,” Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy secretary of the Interior Department, said in a statement.

However, environmental activists maintained that the mine would threaten the survival of Tiehm’s buckwheat, a rare Nevada wildflower they described as “a linchpin of the local ecosystem.”

“By greenlighting this mine the Bureau of Land Management is abandoning its duty to protect endangered species,” Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “We need lithium for the energy transition, but it can’t come with a price tag of extinction.”

Concerns have also been raised about the project’s impacts to area water resources, which sustain desert bighorn sheep and mule deer — animals that Western Shoshone tribes have hunted throughout history.

The mine and an access road together will encompass about 7,166 acres of land. The project is expected to include 17 years of lithium extraction.

Read more from our colleague Sharon Udasin at TheHill.com.

Welcome to The Hill’s Energy & Environment newsletter, we’re Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk— keeping you up to speed on the policies impacting everything from oil and gas to new supply chains.

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