Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won't Let Them Dig It Up

Mary and Gary Freeman, founders of a Florida-based lab supplies company, discovered a rich lithium deposit in Maine while searching for tourmaline, a striking, multi-colored gemstone found in the region. The timing of their find is significant as it could provide the United States with a domestic source of lithium for the clean energy transition and potentially be worth $1.5 billion. However, there's strong opposition to developing a mine. "Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres," reports TIME. "There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017." Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an excerpt from the report: "This is a story that has been played out in Maine for generations," says Bill Pluecker, a member of the state's House of Representatives, whose hometown of Warren -- a 45-minute drive from the capital city of Augusta -- recently voted overwhelmingly in favor of a temporary ban on industrial metal mining after a Canadian company came looking for minerals near a beloved local pond. "We build industries based on the needs of populations not living here and then the bottom drops out, leaving us struggling again to pick up the pieces." "Our gold rush mentality regarding oil has fueled the climate crisis," says State Rep. Margaret O'Neil, who presented a bill last session that would have halted lithium mining for five years while the state worked out rules (the legislation ultimately failed). "As we facilitate our transition away from fossil fuels, we must examine the risks of lithium mining and consider whether the benefits of mining here in Maine justify the harms." The Freemans' point out that they plan to dig for the spodumene, then ship it out of state for processing, so there would be no chemical ponds or tailings piles. They liken the excavation of the minerals to quarrying for granite or limestone, which enjoys a long, rich history in Maine. Advocates for mining in the U.S. argue that, since the country outsources most of its mining to places with less strict environmental and labor regulations, those harms are currently being born by foreign residents, while putting U.S. manufacturers in the precarious position of depending on faraway sources for the minerals they need. Though there are more than 12,000 active mines in the U.S., the bulk of them are for stone, coal, sand, and gravel. There is only one operational lithium mine in the U.S., in Nevada, and one operational rare earth element mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif., meaning that the U.S. is dependent on other countries for the materials essential for clean energy technologies like batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. Even after they're mined, those materials currently have to be shipped to China for processing since the U.S. does not have any processing facilities. "If we're talking about critical metals and materials, we're so far behind that it's crazy," says Corby Anderson, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. "It's the dichotomy of the current administration -- they have incentives for electric vehicles and all these things, but they need materials like graphite, manganese, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. The only one we mine and refine in this country is copper." Further reading: Federal Ruling Approves Construction of North America's Largest Lithium Mine

Read more of this story at Slashdot.