[News] Dispatch from the Lithium Mining War on the West - McDermitt Creek, Thacker Pass and Beyond

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/19/dispatch-from-the-lithium-mining-war-on-the-west-mcdermitt-creek-thacker-pass-and-beyond/>
Dispatch from the Lithium Mining War on the West - McDermitt Creek, Thacker
Pass and Beyond
Katie Fite - June 19, 2023
------------------------------

A recent financial Webinar
<https://www.finnewsnetwork.com.au/archives/finance_news_network415358.html?fbclid=IwAR0j9ixOtoS4iBYSuLgl7bfYhsFC3JqMLjsMhy1DEW_ArjkdqqJaEgSoPX0>
features Jindalee mining company executive Lindsay Dudfield selling the
company’s plan for an immense lithium mining project that would tear apart
the heart of irreplaceable Sage-grouse habitat at McDermitt Creek in
southeast Oregon. Australian miner Jindalee has spun itself off as a US
company, just as Lithium Americas did when it formed Lithium Nevada
Corporation (LNC) to mine Thacker Pass further south in the McDermitt
caldera. This positions the miners for federal loan largesse as they pursue
mining destruction of the sagebrush sea. I wrote about the extraordinary
McDermitt Creek values at stake, and the damage and habitat fragmentation
already inflicted by 70 or so previous Jindalee exploration drilling sites
here
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/10/the-lithium-frenzy-is-an-ecological-catastrophe-for-oregons-high-desert/>
.

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Distant view of scar from a new road and just one of Jindalee’s past
McDermitt drill sites. Look at how wide open and unencumbered by hills this
country is – maximizing the distance any mining disturbance sights and
sounds will travel.

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Jindalee drill hole sump. Drilling waste water left to seep into the
ground, Wildlife “exclusion” fence fallen down.

This is a map of the ghastly 2023 Jindalee exploration plan to punch in 267
new drill hole and sump sites and construct 30 miles of new roads. It would
fragment an area with a very high density of nesting sagebrush songbirds of
all kinds. Birds like Sagebrush Sparrow require continuous blocks of dense
mature or old growth big sagebrush. Jindalee boasts its consultant
environmental and cultural studies have found “no show-stoppers” and “no
red flags”. Industry gets the results it wants when it pays for mine
consultant work. Federal and state agencies, after a bit of pro forma
sniping, acquiesce to what the mine comes up with.

No red flags? Does the company really expect us to believe they or their
consultants aren’t aware of the plight of Sage-grouse, and the importance
of the stronghold habitat they would wipe out? The 2015 BLM Sage-grouse
plan found the entire McDermitt Creek area and nearly all caldera lands
were essential for the bird’s survival. BLM determined that a federal
mineral withdrawal was necessary to protect this Focal habitat and to
ensure Sage-grouse species survival. The withdrawal never happened, stopped
first by mining and cattle industry litigation. BLM then began a
stand-alone NEPA analysis for the withdrawal. Trump terminated that
withdrawal analysis process. Then after a court ruled his action unlawful,
BLM foot-dragging has stalled the most recent withdrawal process at the
NEPA scoping stage and it appears merged with a cumbersome major plan
revision.

Jindalee’s new exploration proposal – a prelude to a mine – would
tragically rip apart the Basin heart. A full blown mine here would
obliterate it. Mining noise and visual disturbance emanating outward would
make the remaining sage ringing the mine site uninhabitable. The site is
surrounded by dozens of leks.

The impossibility of mitigating a mega-mine at McDermitt Creek just blasted
further into the stratosphere. Mounting scientific evidence shows how
seriously the sight and sound disturbance footprint of industrial projects
harms the birds. New research examined geothermal energy development
impacts from Ormat plants at Tuscarora Nevada and McGinness Hills/Grass
Valley near Austin. (I remember the Battle Mountain BLM manager extolling
Ormat’s virtues when the McGinness project was pushed through and then
later expanded to take a bigger bite out of sage habitat). New research
<https://sierranevadaally.org/2023/06/06/could-geothermal-be-hurting-sage-grouse-populations/>
found <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320722004426>:

*“… sage-grouse population numbers declined substantially in years
following the development of a geothermal energy plant … sage-grouse
abundance at leks [breeding sites] decreased within five kilometers of the
infrastructure and leks were completely abandoned at significantly higher
rates within about two kilometers. So, we looked at the mechanisms
responsible for declines in numbers and lek abandonment, and we found
adverse impacts to survival of female sage-grouse and their nests”.*

This reinforces common sense: “*Nests located farther from the plant tended
to experience higher rates of survival. Interestingly, where hills were
located between sage-grouse nests and infrastructure [high topographic
impedance], we found the distance effect to be less important. Under those
circumstances topography was compensating for the lack of distance and
likely serving to reduce effects of light and sound”*.

“*The physical footprint of geothermal energy infrastructure is small
relative to other renewable energy … but noise and light pollution
emanating from these power plants likely cause larger adverse direct
impacts to wildlife populations than infrastructure alone”.*

There aren’t big hills to block a lithium mine’s 24 hour a day sight and
sound impacts in the McDermitt bowl. The mined area would suffer outright
sage obliteration. Surrounding sagebrush would be exposed to unimpeded
straight line 24 hour a day mine operation visual impacts and noise of all
kinds.

Jindalee must know of the indigenous opposition and resistance to the
Thacker Pass lithium mine in the southern caldera, located in similarly
unceded Paiute-Shoshone ancestral lands. Controversy and lawsuits
<https://www.basinandrangewatch.org/Thacker-Pass.html> over Thacker Pass
have been in the headlines for years. It’s a pre-eminent example of an
unjust transition to alternative energy and the green-washing of air and
water polluting habitat wrecking dirty hard rock mining. Unfortunately, a
District Court Judge’s ruling did not halt the Thacker Pass mine
construction. However, the lawsuits by environmental groups, Tribes and a
local rancher opposing the mine continue. The District Court decision was
appealed to the Ninth Circuit, where a hearing is scheduled for June 26.

Thacker Pass mine development would destroy a Traditional Cultural
Property, where Paiute-Shoshone ancestors were massacred. This spring, it’s
been the site of the indigenous Ox Sam Women’s Camp, Newe Momokonee
Nokotun, set up in protest. Descendants of Ox Sam, a survivor of a US
cavalry massacre at Thacker Pass, helped establish it.

Jindalee Webinar statements also hint at efforts afoot to alter Oregon
state mining processes. After lamenting the project wasn’t in Nevada,
Jindalee said it was talking to politicians and the head
<https://ktvz.com/news/government-politics/2022/04/01/new-state-geologist-dogami-director-named/>
of the state mining Department (DOGAMI).

The company’s braggadocio made me blow off deadlines and go once again to
McDermitt Creek to document its great biodiversity values. I then went from
the beauty of singing sagebrush songbirds, newly hatched Sage-grouse chicks
and peaking rare plant blooms at McDermitt Creek (photos below) and down
into the Montana Mountains by Thacker Pass.

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Sagebrush Sparrows abound at McDermitt Creek. They’re great little birds
and often sing throughout the day. And they’re vanishing from many places.
A biologist just told me he thinks they may be extirpated in Morrow County
Oregon where he’s long inventoried bird. No larger continuous blocks of
lower elevation sage = no Sagebrush Sparrows.

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Hymenoxys, an Oregon sensitive plant growing on clay soils.

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Humboldt Mountains Milkweed, a medicinal plant, on clay soils.

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Mountain Bluebird.

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Sky drama all spring long.

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Short-horned Lizard – a master of invisibility.

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Gray Flycatcher. They nest in head high Basin big sagebrush, which is
becoming as scarce as hen’s teeth.

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Lark Sparrow. They’re exuberant singers and are dining on Mormon crickets
at McDermitt Creek.

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An indescribable Indian paintbrush hue.

We’re supposed to sit back and let all this beauty and biodiversity be
destroyed for a lithium mine? No way.

*Thacker Pass – Turmoil, Land Mutilation, Montana Mountains*

I drove south to Orovada and headed west to the turn-off from the state
highway into Pole Creek road, the main access to the Montana Mountains.
Thacker Pass lies at the southern base of these mountains. A maroon Allied
Security company truck squarely blocked the road. Chain link fencing with
No Trespassing and No Drone Zone signs was placed off to both sides.

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I stopped, got out and approached a security guard who appeared at the
truck. He refused <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2LD-ItbPWc> to let me
pass. After several minutes of my insistent repetition that this was a
public road, the BLM mine EIS said this road would always be open, and that
blocking use of this road indicated the EIS, the BLM and Lithium Americas
had lied, the security guard relented and said he would call the head of
security.

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The boss pulled up in a white truck as a sudden rain whirlwind bore down.
His face was obscured, and identity concealed by a tan balaclava-like hood
and dark sunglasses. When he first arrived, he got out of his truck and
pointed a camera device at me. I thought WTF is this – a security firm
mercenary decked out for Operation Iraqi Freedom? Abu Ghraib in Orovada? I
again repeated repeatedly that this was a public access road, and I was
going up into the Montana Mountains to camp. He retreated to his pickup,
likely to run me and my license plates through some creepy database.
Finally, I was allowed to pass through.

Just up the road was the Ox Sam Protest Camp site, located on a huge mine
water pipeline gash that the lithium company had gouged into the earth*. *The
pipeline gash runs right by the sacred Sentinel (or Nipple) Rock. The tents
appeared lifeless, flaps blowing open in the rain squall as I drove by.
With better cell phone service up in the mountains, I called Winnemucca
BLM, asked to talk to a Manager, Assistant Manager, somebody, and told the
receptionist that the mine was trying to block the public access road. She
said there was no one to talk with. I asked for a Manager’s e-mall address.
She refused to give me an address and shunted me to the general BLM mailbox
where public comments go to be ignored. Winnemucca is the BLM outpost in
charge of enforcing LNC’s compliance with EIS requirements. They’ll be sure
to jump on enforcement actions when the public brings potential mining
violations to their attention over the next 45-years.

Later I saw a Google alert for “Thacker Pass”, and read that the camp had
been raided
<https://www.underscore.news/reporting/at-thacker-pass-extraction-and-resistance-come-to-a-head?utm_source=www.mountainwestnews.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=extraction-and-resistance&fbclid=IwAR1_gNvCBR_CNXyHNtlZ7y1rWUkxJHMxUmYfgMV5vArFBextUREjFAWtgHI>
after an incident. *Underscore News/Report for America* writes: “*On
Wednesday, police from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and private
security for Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, cleared the
camp and arrested one protester.*

When I left the next day, the chain link fence with No Trespassing signs
was still up by the sides of the access route. The security truck was gone,
and I drove on through. A local resident pulled up. We chatted, gazing up
at the mountains that were witnessing the lithium mine destruction unfold.
He knows the country like the back of his hand. He said you could see over
20 mountain ranges from the Montanas. Our presence generated the interest
of security guards who came by to check us out as we stood by the state
road right of way. A project worker came and moved the chain link fence
with its No Trespassing signs away – at least for now.

Allied Security’s aggressive approach to security has gained notoriety. The
Denver city council canceled
<https://denverite.com/2020/10/26/denver-city-council-spikes-25-million-contract-with-private-security-company-allied-universal/>
their contract after two Allied guards beat a black man so hard they caused
him permanent brain damage. In May, *Time* magazine profiled
<https://time.com/6278534/allied-universal-security-problems/> a long
troubling history of Allied incidents.

How fitting. Lithium Americas came in claiming Thacker Pass was some kind
of great “green” mine, as cover for plain old dirty open pit mining and a
noxious lithium processing plant. Now they’ve hired a security firm prone
to violence. I don’t know what went down with the Ox Sam camp. But I do
know that having the security boss decked out in black ops head gear is an
effort to intimidate, and an indication the security firm may have things
to hide. Security personnel concealing their identity or playing gatekeeper
on a public lands access road in this way have no place at a project on
public lands. Months before the Ox Sam camp was set up, LNC had established
a manned compound with a building and fencing and what looked like cameras
right by the Pole Creek access road. Driving up into the mountains in April
to trek across the snow to the Montana-10 lek had already felt like running
a gauntlet. I wager that anyone going in or out that public road gets
recorded.

LNC has many mining claims staked up in the mountains in Sage-grouse
stronghold habitat including at the Montana 10 lek. This makes efforts to
limit access or intimidate people so they don’t go up there more
concerning. Back home, I consulted the Thacker Final EIS:

“*SR 293, Pole Creek Road, Crowley Creek Road and Rock Creek Road are the
main transportation routes in the Project area. Under Alternative A, LNC
would not close, block, or limit in any manner access along these
routes”. *FEIS
at 494-495. The EIS also constrained use of these access roads for certain
types of mine activities.

Photos below from up in the Montana Mountains looking down on spring 2023
LNC scars from drilling and bulldozing in migratory bird nesting season.
The drilling is creeping upslope. It’s hard to tell if some may be outside
the project boundary. Nevada BLM uses in-front-of-the-bulldozer bird survey
protocols that are deeply flawed with transects spaced 100 ft. apart – a
distance far too wide to detect cryptic sagebrush birds that are experts at
concealment. You practically have to step on or by a nest to detect it. The
only way to avoid migratory bird “take” is for the mine to not destroy the
bird habitat in spring.

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LNC’s drill scarring is a mere prelude to the destruction that’s planned –
5,694 acres of outright destruction in a 17,933 acre project zone. The
enormity and scale of the planned mine is mind boggling – a deep open pit,
a waste rock pile, all types of infrastructure, a lithium smelter/sulfuric
acid plant on-site using huge volumes of waste sulfur shipped into a new
railroad off-loading site by the Winnemucca airport. The latter was just
announced a few months ago, to the dismay of nearby residents who find
themselves facing living by a hazardous materials zone. Hundreds of tons of
off-loaded material will be trucked to Thacker Pass and burned every day in
a plant whose air scrubber design wasn’t even finalized before the Thacker
decision was signed by BLM. What stink and toxic pollution will this
lithium processing generate? McDermitt caldera soils contain uranium
<https://www.protectthackerpass.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FAQ.pdf> and
mercury. Mine water use is estimated to be 1.7 billion gallons annually.
Enormous volumes of diesel fuel will be used throughout the mine’s
operation. What’s green about all this?

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Think of the volume of water that will be sucked through these pipes.

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Beautiful dense big sagebrush full of Sage Thrashers, Brewer’s Sparrows,
and Sage-grouse sign, up in the mountains where LNC has claims galore.

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*Sacrificing the Interior West for Corporate Energy Dominance While Energy
Conservation Lags or Is Forgotten Altogether*

Big Green environmental groups and outdoor interests who’ve been silent on
the unfolding lithium mine destruction at Thacker Pass, or the tragic
destruction of Mojave Desert Tortoise habitat for Big Solar and many other
brewing “green” energy controversies better wake up. The lithium boom
plague that’s descended on the West is hard rock mining at its worst.
Thousands of acres at each mine site become essentially privatized (with
security guards) for 40 or 50 years. Much of the land is reduced to waste
rock rubble piles, gaping pits, infrastructure all over the place. Local
water is used up for processing and for suppressing clouds of dust, and
mine pollutants contaminate the air and ground water.

US taxpayers are helping finance these colonialist lithium mines. LNC
received commitments for a $600 million dollar loan investment of US tax
dollars. General Motors, while continuing to pump out gargantuan
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzOsWBleEFk> trucks and EV Hummers priced
at $110,000, provided LNC with a $600 million dollar injection. In the
Jindalee Webinar, executive Dudfield assured a questioner that their
company will also be “in queue” for similar handouts. The miners are
gobbling up funds for a battery technology that may soon be outdated. China
is zooming past the US with its development of sodium batteries
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/business/china-sodium-batteries.html>
and is introducing
<https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/sodium-ion-jac-group-hina-battery-china/>
them in low-end vehicles, a sane path forward. Why aren’t these funds going
to research alternatives to lithium and safer less earth-wrecking
technologies? Why isn’t Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto directing her
attention to spurring new technologies and sustainability? Instead she’s
using “critical minerals” mantra to justify introducing a bill to make the
1872 Mining Law even worse
<https://www.cortezmasto.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cortez-masto-and-risch-introduce-legislation-to-protect-critical-mineral-production-in-the-west>,
and a wholesale giveaway
<https://apnews.com/article/cortez-masto-mining-bill-nevada-cef1f5e6366130101fd6346424cb2ebb>
to mining companies.

Jindalee’s Webinar talk said the company embraced “social license and
responsibility”, then later emphasized that McDermitt Creek was “a long,
long way” from Oregon population centers like Salem and Portland. This
highlights how lithium mine pollution, cultural site desecration, community
de-stabilization and ecological damage will be out of sight and out of mind
of urban elites.

US government policy is now based on greatly accelerating energy
colonialism of all types within our own borders, and especially on
willy-nilly sacrifice of the public lands of the Interior West. This allows
massively subsidized corporations (often tied to a foreign mothership) and
billionaires to retain a chokehold on energy. Conservation is paid lip
service. BLM’s Tracy Stone-Manning just announced a new proposed rule
making it easier for BLM to hand over public lands to wind and solar
developers, furthering de facto public lands privatization for half a human
lifespan.

But people are catching on. A surprising thing recently happened in Idaho.
The entire Idaho legislature (all the Republicans and the hand full of
Democrats alike) voted in favor of a Resolution
<https://legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2023/legislation/hcr004/>
opposing the BLM Lava Ridge Wind Farm, with its 400 turbines standing 800
feet tall sprawling across 3 counties. Lava Ridge’s plan managed to offend
or disgust everybody – from agricultural operations and home site impacts,
to Golden Eagle and rare bat killing, to destroying the stark setting of
the Minidoka Japanese Internment Camp Monument and marring the Dark Skies
and wildness of Craters of the Moon. The same Legislators, who in a normal
year would be inviting Land Grab proponents from Utah to speak in the
session, were pushing protection of public lands from this behemoth. Lava
Ridge is linked to Idaho Power’s Gateway West “green” transmission line.
That line resulted in a stampede for wind and solar leases in south-central
Idaho.

If you live in the West and love the outdoors, be very afraid of what the
Biden administration’s breakneck push for many more of these “green” lines
will do to public lands, and your access to areas beyond – once projects
feeding energy into the line are built and the fencing goes up. It’s the
sagebrush sea equivalent of building a road through the Amazon.

While there are no huge wind farms yet on public lands in Idaho, there are
many smaller scale turbine arrays on private lands across the Snake River
Plain. It’s become quite apparent that industrial wind is not benign. Above
all else, folks realized
<https://magicvalley.com/news/local/resolution-against-lava-ridge-adopted-by-idaho-senate/article_b15d105c-cd95-11ed-8e24-fbc771ad40bb.html>
how badly Idaho was getting screwed by the Lava Ridge project and its export
<https://blog.idahoreports.idahoptv.org/2023/03/13/house-unanimously-opposes-lava-ridge-wind-project/>
of energy to benefit coastal populations. The Legislature said No to Lava
Ridge exploitation of Idaho as an energy colony. Counties in the Mojave
Desert are now starting to resist some industrial solar developments
overrunning public lands. Remotely sited “renewable” energy or “critical
minerals” projects amount to public land privatization. They cause profound
losses of many kinds – scarring the land, sucking it dry, extinguishing the
wildlife that’s managed to persist in the face of merciless domination
since White settlement, trenching a massacre site.

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I’m outraged at the ecocidal stupidity with which this “energy transition”
is being carried out. Will we soon see Jindalee get US tax dollars to wipe
out the McDermitt Creek Sage-grouse stronghold? How ironic that would be.
Interior just announced funding for major sagebrush habitat restoration
<https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-161-million-landscape-restoration?utm_source=1500+CWP+List+Daily+Clips+and+Updates&utm_campaign=0f34502d7b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_06_01_04_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-0f34502d7b-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D>
using Infrastructure Bill funds in High Priority sagebrush areas. It turns
out one of the sites chosen is the Montana Mountains area. Mapping shows it
includes the Thacker Pass mine area too, where nearly all the sage is on
the verge of being destroyed by LNC. Close review of maps for Interior’s
Montana “restoration” project shows it encompasses the McDermitt Creek
watershed, hence the entire area coveted by Jindalee for massive new
drilling followed by open pit mining. It would be absurd to greenlight
Jindalee’s ghastly exploration plan in primo habitat, when the Interior
Department has identified this very same landscape
<https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6966af5d6f584f8b80f102d391671a3f?utm_source=1500+CWP+List+Daily+Clips+and+Updates&utm_campaign=0f34502d7b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_06_01_04_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-0f34502d7b-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D>
to be among the highest priority for restoration – because so much sage has
already been lost already. The caldera is also key for connectivity between
Sheldon and Owyhee Sage-grouse populations and for biodiversity
preservation.

How long before rejection of lithium and other “critical mineral” mines
grips communities, especially as promised jobs evaporate with increased
mine automation
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestowersclark/2019/10/31/the-mining-industry-could-strike-gold-with-automation/?sh=2426d1eb466e>
and robot
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/giant-robot-trucks-are-now-mining-gold/>
technology, and as the environment goes to hell? But hey, as LNC is showing
us, there’s always a bright future as a security guard– at least until the
lithium company gets itself a pack of Robodogs.

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*Katie Fite is a biologist and Public Lands Director with WildLands
Defense.*
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