DYER, Nev. — Along a spine of windy, high desert mountains near the California border, the Rhyolite Ridge lithium deposit feels remote even for Nevada.
Bernard Rowe, who first came to Esmeralda County, population 736, in the early 2000s, points out the rugged snow-capped peaks to the West.
"That's Boundary Peak, the highest point in Nevada you can see in the distance there," he says.
It was in the mid-2000s that the Australian ended up discovering the ground just beneath him didn't have gold, but instead one of only two known lithium-boron deposits in the world, enough to make batteries for 370,000 electric cars a year.
"Both of them are critical for the energy transition," Rowe says of the minerals.
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 some of the toughest environmental laws in the world and has been content to let other countries mine, and buy many of its critical minerals on the global market. In recent years, there's been a push to get them at home with China and Russia dominating that market.
Just days before the election, Ioneer's mine was given final approval by federal land managers. The U.S. government is also helping finance it and the adjoining processing facility. Ioneer says it has contracts in place with Ford, Toyota and other U.S. manufacturers.
"This is a major, major move in the right direction, in my opinion, for the United States to be permitting projects like this," Rowe says.
In fact the Rhyolite Ridge project is only the second major lithium mine to get approval in the country in the past decade, the other, Thacker Pass, in northern Nevada was permitted in early 2021 at the tail end of the Trump administration.
"There's a lot of safeguards now that mean that companies must, as they should, have detailed planning, not only about developing a mine, but also closing and restoring and reclaiming it," Rowe says.
Environmentalists and tribal activists are suing
But with President-elect Trump set to return to the White House, talk in this corner of rural Nevada has shifted away from safeguards and toward possible headwinds from politics to the courts. Just days after the permits were issued, environmental groups and tribal activists immediately sued to stop the project.
"Mining has been very detrimental to indigenous peoples," says Joe Kennedy, his hands resting on a steering wheel decorated with traditional native patterns as he drives a dusty road at the foot of the mountains near Rhyolite.
A former chairman of the nearby Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, Kennedy is now with the Western Shoshone Defense Project, which joined the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity against the federal Bureau of Land Management for approving the mine.
The plaintiffs allege the BLM rushed it through without fully considering its impacts on cultural sites. But the bigger fight 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.
"This mine's approval is an attack on the integrity of the Endangered Species Act," says Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It's saying if we really, really want a mineral we can brush aside this law and drive a species extinct."
The mining company, Ioneer, says they'll control light pollution and dust and take other measures to ensure the survival of the Theim's buckwheat plant. Company officials also argue they did extensive consultation with tribes and land managers, resulting in their modifying the project to protect cultural sites.
But Kennedy isn't convinced that it's a new day for mining in the United States.
He's been visiting Rhyolite Ridge for 50 years with his father and other elders to hunt, pick pine nuts and perform religious ceremonies. He says the planned 2,000-acre open pit is too close to land considered sacred to indigenous people.
"We have caves around here that are actually used for vision quests," Kennedy says.
Trump's re-election makes things hard to predict
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 also happen to lie on or near ancestral tribal lands.
"Republican or Democrat, you know, it's always about who pays the highest amount to buy the best government they can buy," Kennedy says.
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.
Bernard Rowe doesn't see the change in administrations or the lawsuit stopping his company's would-be mine. The U.S. government has already offered Ioneer up to $700 million in loans for the project.
"No, I don't see it as a headwind," he says. "We are very comfortable that the upcoming change of administration won't change the trajectory of what we're doing.
Mining companies typically plan decades out, and he says they're still on track to open in 2028.
"When we started this project, when we drilled the first hole, Obama was the president, okay," Rowe says.
When they started lithium was selling for about $10 a pound. The price spiked last year at around $80 a pound, before plummeting in the face of a glut in Chinese supplies on the market and slower growth in electric car sales.
If Trump follows through on campaign rhetoric to remove the federal tax breaks for EVs, the price could plummet further.
Locals are hoping the mine brings long-needed money
One thing's for sure, though: the small community of Fish Lake Valley about an hour's drive from the planned mine is banking on Rowe and Ioneer to be here for the long haul.
Trump-Vance signs are still posted along Highway 264 and in front of the Esmeralda Market in tiny Dyer, Nevada, the only place to get gas or food for more than an hour in any direction.
"We're at the point where we need people. We're stagnant, we're going backwards," says Linda Williams, who owns the humble RV park and operates an historical museum next to the only store.
Williams moved here in the 1950s with her family from California as a little girl. They were originally homesteaders. The one restaurant closed and there's no infrastructure, she says, to keep young people here or entice them back.
At 75 years old, she's the one still keeping the family farm going.
"Children have always graduated from here, gone elsewhere, become educated and stayed away," Williams says, noting her own followed a similar path.
She praises Ioneer for funding local scholarships in the school and she hopes the mine will bring hundreds of good paying, not to mention badly needed jobs.
The company says it plans to make a final investment decision on whether to begin construction by the middle of next year.
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