MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President-elect Trump is pledging to abolish the Biden green energy agenda. That includes efforts to encourage more domestic production of critical minerals like lithium for batteries in electric cars. To that end, Biden approved a massive lithium mine in Nevada right before the election. The federal government is helping to finance it. So now, will it actually open? NPR's Kirk Siegler reports.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Here, along a spine of windy, high desert mountains near the California border, the Rhyolite Ridge lithium deposit feels remote even for Nevada. This is Esmeralda County, population 736.
BERNARD ROWE: And yeah, that's Boundary Peak - the highest point in Nevada - you can see in the distance there on the...
SIEGLER: Bernard Rowe came here looking for gold in the early 2000s. But the Australian ended up discovering the ground just beneath us contained one of only two known lithium-boron deposits in the world - enough to make batteries for 370,000 electric cars a year.
ROWE: Both of them are critical for the energy transition.
SIEGLER: When Rowe's company, Ioneer, started planning a lithium mine here eight years ago, they knew they were in for a slog. The U.S. has tough environmental laws and has been content to let other countries mine, and just buy many critical minerals on the global market. Now there's a push to get them at home, with China and Russia dominating that market.
ROWE: This is a major, major move in the right direction, in my opinion, for the United States - permitting projects like this.
SIEGLER: Driving a dusty road at the foot of the mountains, Joe Kennedy doesn't sound convinced.
JOE KENNEDY: Mining has been very detrimental to Indigenous peoples.
SIEGLER: Kennedy is the former chairman of the nearby Timbisha Shoshone tribe. He's now with the Western Shoshone Defense Project, which joined an environmental lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Land Management's approval of the mine. It got filed a few days before the election.
KENNEDY: I've been going over this road probably for the last 50 years with my father and picked pine nuts up here, hunted up here.
SIEGLER: The plaintiffs allege the BLM rushed it through without fully considering its impacts on cultural sites. But the bigger fight here is over an endangered desert plant that's only found in the lithium-rich soils in a 10-acre area next to the planned mine. The mining company says it will control dust and take other measures to ensure the survival of Tiehm's buckwheat. But Kennedy is more concerned about the planned 2,000-acre open pit around land his people long considered sacred.
KENNEDY: We have caves around here that are actually used for vision quests.
SIEGLER: The BLM declined to comment for this story, citing pending litigation. But tribal activists across the West are fighting planned mines like this that are billed as key for the energy transition but are also on ancestral tribal lands.
KENNEDY: Republican or Democrat, you know, it's always about who pays the highest amount to buy the best government they can buy.
SIEGLER: President-elect Trump says he wants to dismantle Biden's green energy plans. But on the other hand, he's talking tough on tariffs, and he has an increasingly cozy relationship with Elon Musk, who's been investing billions in Nevada's EV industry.
KENNEDY: Trump goes this way, goes that way, so we don't know.
SIEGLER: The Biden administration offered the mining company a $700 million loan to develop the mine. Bernard Rowe doesn't see the change in administrations or the lawsuit stopping it.
ROWE: No, I don't see it as a headwind.
SIEGLER: Mining companies typically plan decades out, and he says they're still on track to open here in 2028.
ROWE: When we started this project, Obama - when we drilled the first hole, Obama was the president, OK? So...
SIEGLER: But when they started, lithium prices were on the way up. Now they're down, with a glut in Chinese supplies and slagging demand for EV cars. One thing's for sure, though - the small community near the planned mine is banking on Rowe being here for the long haul. Trump-Vance signs are still posted along Highway 264 and in front of the Esmeralda market, the only place to get gas or food for more than an hour in any direction.
LINDA WILLIAMS: And I talked to him, told him that...
SIEGLER: Linda Williams owns the humble RV park next door. And at 75, she's still keeping the family farm going.
WILLIAMS: Children have always graduated from here, gone elsewhere, become educated and stayed away (laughter).
SIEGLER: She says the mine will bring hundreds of good-paying, badly needed jobs. The company says it plans to make a final decision on whether to move forward out here by next year.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Dyer, Nevada. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
