The Pelican River area in Wisconsin. A group that worked with local officials to try to prevent the establishment of a conservation easement on land surrounding the river has influenced a propsal to change Oneida County's comprehensive plan. (Jay Brittain | Courtesy of the photographer)
A committee of the Oneida County Board has approved a number of changes to the draft of the county’s new comprehensive plan suggested by a timber industry group, aided by U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and American Stewards of Liberty, a right-wing nonprofit that has taken an interest in land use policy in Wisconsin’s Northwoods.
The five-member planning and development committee approved the recommended changes of the Rhinelander-based Great Lakes Timber Professional Association (GLTPA) at a meeting earlier this month.
Since the approval of the Pelican River Forest conservation easement earlier this year, American Stewards of Liberty has undertaken an effort to influence local planning decisions up north. The organization has traditionally focused on ranching issues in the American west. Now it has begun to grow and, after being introduced by Tiffany, worked with officials in the region to oppose the Pelican River easement on the grounds that federal and state officials had not “coordinated” with locals.
The group’s executive director, Margaret Byfield, later spoke at the timber group’s convention in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula this spring.
ASL’s ideology, in the name of protecting property rights, calls for an expansion of extractive uses of land, including increased logging and the approval of open pit mines in the area. Opponents say the group twists a desire to protect private property owners into a belief system that prevents others from acting to conserve resources on their own land.
The organization was also involved in helping to write the environmental policy sections of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document written as a policy guide for the second Trump administration.
Every county in Wisconsin is required to establish a comprehensive plan and update it once per decade. The document outlines goals and strategies for achieving the county’s land use plans. Oneida County has already made a number of changes to its draft plan that move county planning decisions away from support of conservation and toward more extractive uses of the land.
The acceptance of the recommended changes concern environmental advocates, who argue that once one county has codified the ASL agenda, it becomes easier for neighboring counties to simply cut and paste those sections when their comprehensive plans are up for renewal. Opponents also worry that ASL’s viewpoint will have more sway across the country once Trump takes office in January.
Ahead of the committee’s Nov. 8 meeting, Henry Schienebeck, executive director of the GLTPA, sent a 31-page list of recommended changes to the body. The document mirrors the comprehensive plan, going through each chapter and recommending new, more anti-conservation language. It includes a number of provisions straight from ASL talking points, including sections that require conservation efforts to be coordinated with local officials, encouraging mining in the region and listing a need to “protect property rights” as a “top priority.”
At the nearly six-hour meeting, Schienebeck said that GLTPA’s recommended changes were developed by a committee that included the organization’s board members and Byfield as well as Tiffany and his staff.
“We really just want to make sure that forestry is included in that and that we don’t lose access to the forest,” Schienebeck said. “And a lot of the issues that are in this plan deal with forest and natural resources, and that’s really what we’re working with every day.”
Schienebeck did not respond to a request for comment on his organization’s recommendations.
The GLTPA recommendations include proposals to change a section in the comprehensive plan that previously stated the county should “minimize impacts to the county’s natural resources from nonmetallic mining.” The new language states that the county should “consider impacts to the county’s natural resources from nonmetallic mining.”
Many of the GLTPA recommendations were accepted without amendment by the members of the planning and development committee. Of the committee’s five members, four did not respond to a request for comment and one, Scott Holewinski, said he was out of the country and unable to comment.
Eric Rempala, a member of local conservation group, Oneida County Clean Waters Action, spoke against the GLTPA recommendations at the meeting and tells the Wisconsin Examiner it’s “outrageous” to give an industry group this much influence over county land use policies. Everyone involved should be more honest about ASL’s involvement, he argues.
“You guys need to admit who you’re working with and what you’re trying to accomplish,” Rempala says.
Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, was heavily involved in getting the Pelican River Forest easement established. He says the language in the GLTPA recommendations is straight out of the ASL “playbook” and poses a threat to the health of the Northwoods environment and future conservation efforts in the area.
“This is kind of a thing that we’ve all been worried about since Pelican River,” he says. “If that stuff actually gets written into a [comprehensive] plan, that is a dangerous foundation — both for Oneida County, but then something that could easily be copied by other counties.”
Environmental advocates are concerned about the second Trump administration's effect on Wisconsin water quality. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump frequently talked about slashing environmental regulations on industry, freeing them up to do as they wish because climate change is a “hoax.”
With about 70 days until the second Trump administration takes office, environmental advocacy groups in Wisconsin are preparing for how they’ll respond to the actions of the Trump-led Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Agriculture and the Interior as they try to protect the state’s air, water and natural resources.
Howard Learner, president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, says the first Trump term had negative effects on the environment, but the difference this time around is that Wisconsin and its midwestern neighbors have Democratic governors, attorneys general and liberal majorities on their state Supreme Courts.
“For the next few years in Wisconsin, there’s a Democratic governor, a Democratic-appointed Wisconsin [Department of Natural Resources] (DNR), a Democratic attorney general and a Democratic majority Supreme Court,” Learner says. “Where previously a number of DNR issues got tied up by the Republican majority, the current Supreme Court has given DNR more latitude to be protective of the environment. So there’s an opportunity for the states to be stepping up if the federal government is pulling back, and Wisconsin should seize that opportunity.”
Many environmental advocates are also still in “wait-and-see” mode, wondering which party will win control of the U.S. House of Representatives and which members of Congress will control the body’s committees.
Sara Walling, Clean Wisconsin’s water and agriculture program director, points to areas where there’s broad bipartisan consensus and there isn’t need for concern — largely the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a multi-agency collaboration to protect the largest freshwater lakes in the world.
“Over the years, since its initial authorization, and then its reauthorization several times now, including during the Trump administration, both parties have really supported Great Lakes Restoration funding and those programs, so we fully expect that it will be intact and continue to be authorized moving forward,” Walling says.
But she adds there are questions about the level of funding for projects such as cleanup efforts in the Milwaukee River estuary. She also says it’s unlikely progress will continue for starting a similar large-scale restoration project with the Mississippi River.
Walling says she’s concerned about the Trump-led EPA’s reliance on scientific research conducted by industries the agency regulates.
“Generally speaking, the Trump administration in the past, and I don’t see any of this changing going forward, does not tend to rely on science when making a lot of its decisions at the EPA level,” she says.
Walling expects the incoming president’s administration to reject Biden administration EPA provisions “that have really been very heavily supported by really expansive scientific studies,” she says. “There’s a lot of initiatives that the EPA has been undertaking that are really a science-driven exploration of any environmental issue, to use that science as the backing for potentially new regulations.”
Walling says that the pesticide and agricultural industries are areas where Republicans have complained about what the scientific research has found, and the Trump-led EPA and USDA may swing the pendulum back toward using research conducted by the companies themselves that ignores potential harms to the environment.
Gussie Lord, the managing attorney of the tribal partnerships program at Earthjustice, says that for Wisconsin’s Native American tribes, the environmental concerns of the Trump administration focus largely on the construction of the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline in northern Wisconsin and the delisting of the gray wolf, once again allowing the animal to be hunted in the state.
“We don’t know for sure what’s going to happen or what their priorities are going to be, but we can look at the previous Trump administration and the things that have been said by his advisors and former advisors, and we can surmise that there’s going to be a focus toward more extractive industry practices, including mining, oil and gas,” Lord says.
Lord says protections under the National Environmental Policy Act, wetland protections under the Clean Water Act and subsidies for green energy are all at risk of being reduced. He also considers it likely that the new administration will approve federal permits for Line 5.
On Friday, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents much of northern Wisconsin, wrote in his weekly email newsletter about “tapping into America’s clean oil and gas resources” and that removing the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list is a priority under the new administration
“I am committed to passing my legislation that will return gray wolf management back to the states, allowing us to protect our communities and rural livelihoods,” he wrote.
In the previous Congress, Tiffany was a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources and chairman of the subcommittee on federal lands. During his last term, he allied with right-wing anti-conservation group American Stewards of Liberty to oppose conservation projects in northern Wisconsin.
American Stewards of Liberty (ASL) played a role in developing Project 2025, the policy plan written for the Trump administration. The president-elect said during the campaign the document wasn’t going to reflect his administration, but Trump allies have touted it as a playbook for his term in the days after his victory.
Charlie Carlin, director of strategic initiatives at Gathering Waters, which focuses on land conservation in Wisconsin, says ASL’s ideology becoming a main aim of the federal government’s environmental policy is worrying.
“If we take seriously that Project 2025 is essentially a guiding document for what the next Trump administration looks like, then I think we need to be really concerned about the future of permanent land conservation, kind of across the board,” Carlin says. That extends to agricultural land and working forest land as well as natural and wildlife areas, he adds.
ASL and Tiffany have been outspoken in their support for extractive industries, and Carlin says he’s worried about the trade-off the Trump administration appears likely to make.
“I think it’s incredibly concerning — what’s the long term sustainability of both the landscape and the economy of northern Wisconsin if the levers of federal government are used to incentivize extraction [which] in northern Wisconsin is likely to be open pit mining,” Carlin says.
“There’s potentially a major short term economic gain for the wealthiest — for the people who are the owners of those mining companies, or folks who invest in those companies.” he adds. “But then what suffers there is both water quality and forest land cover for the long term. So maybe you get 10 years or maybe a generation worth of revenue … extracted as you’re mining, and then you’re left with many generations of poison water or impaired water quality.”
He adds that short-term gain could result in a long-term loss in more sustainable industries, diminishing property tax values for communities in the region.
“If you strip the timber off of the land in order to dig a big hole to extract minerals, then what you don’t have is the regular annual income that supports loggers and that supports the truckers and that supports the mills, and also, that land base supports the outdoor recreation economy and the second-home economy that provides so much of the property tax base up north,” Carlin says. “And so what you’re talking about is this sort of short term blitz that is going to benefit a very few people at the consequence of the long term environmental and economic health of the entire region.”
In the dusty light of a decades-old lunch counter in Lewisville, Arkansas, Chantell Dunbar-Jones expressed optimism at what the lithium boom coming to this stretch of the state will mean for her hometown. She sees jobs, economic development, and a measure of prosperity returning to a region that needs them. After waving to a gaggle of children crossing the street in honey-colored afternoon sunshine, the city council member assessed the future as best she could. “Not to say that everything’s perfect, but I feel like the positives way outweigh the negative,” she said.
Lewisville sits in the southwest corner of the state, squarely atop the Smackover Formation, a limestone aquifer that stretches from northeast Texas to the Gulf Coast of Florida and has for 100 years spurted oil and natural gas. The petroleum industry boomed here in the 1920s and peaked again in the 1960s before declining to a steady trickle over the decades that followed. But the Smackover has more to give. The brine and bromine pooled 10,000 feet below the surface contains lithium, a critical component in the batteries needed to move beyond fossil fuels.
Exxon Mobil is among at least four companies lining up to draw it from the earth. It opened a test site not far from Lewisville late last year and plans to extract enough of the metal to produce 100,000 electric vehicle batteries by 2026 and 1 million by 2030. Another company, Standard Lithium, believes its leases may hold 1.8 million metric tons of the material and will spend $1.3 billion building a processing facility to handle it all. All of this has Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders predicting that her state will become the nation’s leading lithium producer.
With so much money to be made, Dunbar-Jones and other public officials find themselves being courted by extraction company executives eager to tell them what all of this could mean for the people and places they lead. They have been hosting town meetings, promising to build lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the communities and residents of the area. So far, Dunbar-Jones and many others are optimistic. They see a looming renaissance, even as other community members acknowledge the mixed legacies of those who earn their money pulling resources from the ground. Such companies provide livelihoods, but only as long as there is something to extract, and they often leave pollution in their wake.
The companies eyeing the riches buried beneath the pine forests and bayous promise plenty of jobs and opportunities, and paint themselves as responsible stewards of the environment. But drawing brine to the surface is a water-intensive process, and similar operations in Nevada aren’t expected to create more than a few hundred permanent jobs. It’s high-paying work, but often requires advanced degrees many in this region don’t possess. Looking beyond the employment question, some local residents are wary of the companies looking to lease their land for lithium. It brings to mind memories of the unscrupulous and shady dealings common during the oil boom of a century ago.
For residents of Lewisville, which is majority Black, such concerns are set against a broader history of bigotry and the fact that even as other towns prospered, they have long been the last to benefit from promises of the sort being made these days. Folks throughout the area are quick to note that the wealth that flowed from the oil fields their parents and grandparents worked benefited some more than others, even as they lived with the ecological devastation that industry left behind.
Dunbar-Jones is confident that, if nothing else, concern about their reputation and a need to ensure cordial relations with community leaders will sway lithium companies into supporting local needs. “All I can say is right now it’s up in the air as to what they will do,” she said, “but it seems promising.”
Lewisville sits just west of Magnolia, El Dorado, and Camden, three cities that outline the “golden triangle” region that prospered after the discovery of oil in 1920. In an area long dependent upon timber, the plantation economy transformed almost instantly as tenant farmers, itinerant prospectors, and small landholders became rich. Within five years, 3,483 wells dotted the land, and Arkansas was producing 73 million barrels annually.
Although the boom created great wealth, Lewisville remained largely rural, and its residents labored in the fields that made others rich. Still, the oil economy, coupled with the timber industry, brought a rush of saloons, itinerant workers, and hotels to many towns. Restaurants, supermarkets, and other trappings of a middle-class community soon followed, though Lewisville always lagged a bit behind.
That prosperity lasted a bit longer than the oil did. The first wells ran dry by the end of the 1920s, but the Smackover continued producing 20 to 30 million barrels annually until 1967, when it began a steady decline. These days, it offers about 4.4 million a year.
A fading map of Arkansas on a building in Lafayette County. Credit: Lou Murrey / Grist
The shops that once served Lewisville and the furniture and feed factories that employed those who didn’t work the fields have long since gone. Jana Crank, who has lived here for 58 years, came of age in the 1960s and remembers prosperous times. She runs a community gallery in what’s left of downtown, where most buildings sport faded paint and cracked windows. “It used to be a TV fix-it shop,” Crank, a retired high school art teacher, said of the space.
As she spoke, a group of friends painted quietly. Canvases showing sunsets, crosses, and landscapes lined the walls. The scenes, bright and cheerful, stood in contrast to Lewisville, where retailers have moved on, the hospital has closed, and the schools have been consolidated to save money. Fewer than 900 people live here, about half as many as during the town’s peak in the 1970s. They tend to be older, with a median household income of around $30,000. “People are just dying out, their children don’t even live in town,” Crank said. “They have nothing to come back for.”
That could change. Jobs associated with mining rare-earth minerals are highly compensated and highly sought-after, many of them netting as much as $92,000 per year. State Commerce Secretary Hugh McDonald believes the state could provide 15% of the world’s lithium needs, and Sanders has said Arkansas is “moving at breakneck speed to become the lithium capital of America.”
A few steps in that direction already have been taken around Lewisville, the county seat of Lafayette County. It is home to 13 lithium test wells, the most in the region. They’re tucked away behind pine trees, fields of cattle, and, occasionally, homes. The dirt and gravel roads leading to them have been churned to slurry by heavy equipment.
Those who own and work the wells arrived quietly last year, their presence indicated by the increasing number of trucks with plates from nearby Texas and Louisiana, sparking rumors throughout the region. They officially announced themselves to Mayor Ethan Dunbar last fall, in visits to local officials, mostly county leaders, to initiate friendly relations and establish the basis for economic partnerships. Mayor Dunbar and the Lewisville City Council were invited to a public meeting where lithium company executives discussed their plans and took questions.
The town’s motto is “Building Community Pride,” something Dunbar-Jones, who is the mayor’s sister, takes seriously. She and others have hosted movie nights, community dinners, and, in a particular point of pride, clinics to help people convicted of crimes get their records expunged. Meanwhile, the city council, joined by a number of residents, has come together to nail down just what the lithium boom will mean for the town and to ensure everyone knows what’s in store.
That’s particularly important, Dunbar-Jones said, because 60% of the town’s residents are Black. “Typically in minority neighborhoods, people are not as aware of what’s going on, because the information just doesn’t trickle down to them the way it does to other people,” she said. “At the meetings with the actual lithium companies, there may be a handful of people of color there versus others. So that lets you know who’s getting that information.”
Chantell Dunbar-Jones talks her town’s future in the Burge’s restaurant, Lewisville’s only thriving business. Credit: Lou Murrey / Flickr
A representative of Exxon, the only company that responded to a request for comment, said it has strived to build ties with communities throughout the region. “We connect early and often with elected officials, community members and local leaders to have meaningful conversations, provide transparency, and find ways to give back,” the representative said. It has opened a community liaison office in Magnolia and has worked with the city’s Chamber of Commerce to sponsor community events. It also established a $100,000 endowment for Columbia and Lafayette counties to provide grants for “education, public safety, and quality-of-life initiatives.”
Folks in Lewisville would like to see more of that kind of attention. In March, the city, working with the University of Arkansas Hope-Texarkana, hosted a town hall meeting so residents could speak to lithium executives and express concerns. The mayor recalls it drawing a standing room-only crowd that expressed hope that the industry would bring jobs and revenue to town, but also worried about the environmental impact. Folks called on Exxon and other companies to support new housing and establish pathways for young people to work in the industry.
Venesha Sasser, who at 29 is the chief development officer of the local telephone company, sees the coming boom providing an opportunity to build generational wealth for families and resources, like broadband internet access, for communities. Any company that can invest $4 billion in a lithium operation can surely afford to toss a little back, Sasser said. “We want to make sure that whoever is investing in our community, and who we are investing in, actually means our people good.”
Sasser followed a trajectory common among young Black professionals from the area: She left to pursue an education, then returned to care for loved ones. As she got more involved in the community, she often found herself being treated a little differently, an experience Mayor Dunbar delicately described as bumping up against “old systems.” Lewisville is a majority-Black town in a majority-White county, and as of 2022, had a poverty rate of 23%. Although community leaders say they work well with colleagues in other towns and with county leaders, they also feel that they’ve had to elbow their way into conversations with lithium companies. They worry that the dynamics of the oil days, when Black men worked alongside whites but often in lower-paying, less desirable jobs and most of the money stayed in wealthier cities like El Dorado, will repeat themselves.
“You had people from Magnolia and El Dorado and Spring Hill and other places coming in and doing the work and reaping the benefits, and then when it was gone, they were gone,” said Virginia Henry, a retired school teacher who grew up in Lewisville and lives in Little Rock. Her ex-husband drilled for oil years ago, and the experience left her with a sour taste in her mouth. “I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty much the same,” she said. “They’re going to ease in, they want to do all this work and create all these jobs for somebody and then ease out when it’s done in a few years. Then here we’ll be with soil that can’t grow anything, contaminated water, and a whole bunch of kids with asthma.”
Mayor Dunbar, who is midway through his second term, is trying to balance reservations with optimism. “‘Imagine the possibilities.’ That’s my tagline,” he said, settling into a chair at City Hall. A blackboard behind him outlined his priorities: housing, recreation, education. He hopes support from companies like Tetra Technologies, which is developing a 6,138-acre project not far away, will finance those goals and give people a future that’s more stable than the past, one in which Lewisville’s children can pursue the same opportunities that kids in nearby, better-resourced communities can.
“Think about Albemarle in Magnolia,” he said, referring to the bromine plant about 30 miles up the road. “Get a job at Albemarle, you stay there 25 years, you earn a decent salary, you’d have a decent retirement. You can live well. Quality of life is good. We are hoping to see the same thing here.”
Many of the people poised to benefit from the lithium beneath their feet seem ambivalent about climate change. In El Dorado, in a bar called The Mink Eye, an oil refinery worker grimaced at the mention of electric vehicles. The next morning, retired oil workers gathered at Johnny B’s Grill scoffed at the idea of a boom. A waitress admitted that she’d bought stock in lithium companies, but said any faith that the industry will bring renewed prosperity does not necessarily mean folks are on board with the green transition. “These men drive diesels,” she said, pointing toward her customers. Still, she said, any jobs are good jobs.
That attitude pervades the state capitol in Little Rock, where politicians who don’t give much thought to why the energy transition is necessary cheer the state’s emerging role in it. The governor, who has cast doubt on human-caused climate change, has appeared at industry events like the Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit to proclaim the state “bullish” on its reserves of the element. “We all knew that towns like El Dorado and Smackover were built by oil and gas,” Sanders told the audience. “But who knew that our quiet brine and bromine industry had the potential to change the world.”
Much of the world’s lithium is blasted out of rocks or drawn from brine left to evaporate in vast pools, leaving behind toxic residue. The companies descending on Arkansas plan to use a more sustainable method called direct lithium extraction, or DLE. It seems to be a bit more ecologically friendly and much less water-intensive than the massive pit mines or vast evaporation ponds often found in South America. It essentially pumps water into the aquifer, filters the lithium from the extracted brine, then returns it to the aquifer in what advocates call a largely closed system. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, in a report prepared for the Nature Conservancy, said that “DLE appears to offer the lowest impacts of available extraction technologies.”
Still, the technology is relatively new. According to Yale Environment 360, Arkansas provides a suitable proving ground for the approach because it has abundant water, a large concentration of lithium, and an established network of wells, pipelines, and refineries. But there are concerns about the amount of water required and the waste material left behind, despite repeated assurances from lithium companies that the process is safe and sustainable.
Although DLE doesn’t require as much water as brine evaporation, in which that water is lost, “it is a freshwater consumption source,” Patrick Donnelly, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview with KUAF radio in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The waste generated by the process is another concern, he said, “in particular, a solid waste stream. It’s impossible for them to extract only the lithium.”
Locals are well aware of the impact brine can have on the land. Before anyone realized its value, oil and gas producers didn’t worry much about it leaking or spilling onto the ground, literally salting the earth. Some are concerned that the pipelines that will carry brine to refineries might leak, as they did in the oil days. Such fears are compounded by the fact the state Department of Environmental Quality relies on individuals to report problems and doesn’t appear to do much outreach to residents.
A churned-up entrance to a lithium test site in Lafayette County. Credit: Lou Murrey / Grist
There’s also a lot of skepticism about how many jobs the boom may create. So far, Standard Lithium’s plant in El Dorado employs 91 people, said Douglas Zollner, who works with the Arkansas branch of the Nature Conservancy and has toured the facility. No one’s offered any projections on how many people might find work in the budding industry, but a lithium boom in Nevada suggests it may not be all that many. Construction of the Thacker Pass mine, which could produce 80,000 metric tons of lithium annually, is expected to generate 1,500 temporary construction and other jobs — but it will only employ 300 once operational.
Those jobs pay well, but typically require advanced training. Public universities like Arkansas Tech University are revising science and engineering curricula to meet the lithium industry’s needs, hoping to connect students with internships in the field. However, locals worry that disinvestment in schools in rural and largely Black communities will leave those who most need these jobs unable to attain the training necessary to land them.
Just how much money might flow into local communities remains another open question. Fossil fuel companies lease the land they drill and pay landowners royalties of 16.67% of their profit. Any oil pumped from the land also is taxed at 4 to 5% of its market value. This fee, called severance tax, is paid to the counties or towns from which the resource was extracted.
None of these things apply to lithium. So far, there is no severance tax on the metal, though the state levies a tax of $2.75 for every 1,000 barrels of the brine from which it is extracted. The state Oil and Gas Commission continues haggling over a royalty rate, though it seems unlikely the fee will be as high as those paid on oil and gas leases. When the state sought a double-digit royalty, the industry balked, arguing that extracting and processing lithium is expensive and officials ought to wait until production begins in earnest before deciding what’s fair.
Companies cannot extract and sell the metal for commercial use until the commission sets a royalty rate, a process expected to drag on for some time. On July 26, the major players in the Arkansas lithium industry filed a joint application seeking a rate of 1.82%. The South Arkansas Mineral Association — which represents the majority of landowners, which is to say, timber companies, oil companies, and other corporate interests — demanded a higher share.
Small landowners still hope to benefit, and the lack of clarity around royalties hasn’t done much to engender trust among locals wary of the companies looking to lease their land. Some folks, already offered terms, are using online forums to determine if they’re being stiffed. Others fear efforts to wrest land from the few Black families who own property, often passed between generations informally without a deed or title. Such land, called heirs’ property, accounts for more than one-third of Black-owned property in the South, and without the documentation required to prove ownership, land can be subject to court-ordered sales.
Many in Lewisville say they regularly receive calls and texts from people interested in buying land, and Henry has seen people checking out properties and attending auctions. During a visit to the Lafayette County courthouse archives, I noticed a woman thumbing through mineral rights records. Although she wouldn’t identify herself, she politely explained that she was checking such documents throughout Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana, bringing to mind the speculators who, during the oil boom, did the same before approaching naive residents who may not know about the riches under their land.
Beyond the timber companies with holdings in the region, most of the major landowners are white and wealthy, and any spoils, Henry suspects, will simply pass from one affluent family or powerful company to another, with no benefit to people like her. “What land, honey?” she said with a small, sardonic laugh. “That’s a pie in the sky type dream to me.”
Despite the concerns, the hype and fanfare surrounding the possibility of an economic revival remains high. City officials in Lewisville, and the people they lead, are trying to remain open-minded and easygoing even if unanswered questions linger about how many jobs might be coming, how the boom will benefit their town, and what it will mean for the environment.
“You know, it’s kind of frustrating because the questions get asked at these meetings,” Dunbar, the mayor, said. But he feels the lithium companies often meet questions with the same pleasant, if unhelpful, answer of “We can’t talk about it.” They’re always so careful in their responses. “They deliberately did not say anything until they knew what they wanted to do and say, that’s the same with what they want to provide communities,” Dunbar said.
As for the $100,000 commitment from Exxon, no one’s sure exactly who will receive that money or how allocations will be made. The mayor, discussing that point, showed some frustration. He said he has tried, and will continue to try, to get the companies to put their promises of jobs and support for local infrastructure in writing.
The balance of goodwill that he is trying to maintain between everyone involved is delicate: the lithium companies, whose jobs and support his community desperately needs; the county officials he must work with; the residents of Lewisville; and the mayors he collaborates with on grant applications. These towns are small, and word spreads quickly; relationships are as precious as the riches deep below the ground.
As Dunbar-Jones, the city council member, finished her turkey sandwich in the late afternoon light of the diner, she spoke of her faith in the ties between the people of Lewisville. “It’s hard to get a group of people to work together, period, especially when they don’t know each other,” she said. “But we all know each other.”
Despite her confidence, she knows she’s dealing with relationships in which companies take what they can and leave, where the question of what they owe the communities that enrich them is naive. Her father benefited from his job at Phillips 66, but it couldn’t last forever. When the oil was gone, those who profited from it were, too. From their perspective, she said, it’s a question of “How long am I going to support a community I’m no longer in? It would be unrealistic to think that there will be some long-term benefits from it.” The same is true of lithium, and the companies that will mine it. At some point, they will leave, and take their jobs and their money with them. Dunbar-Jones only hopes they leave Lewisville a little better off once they’ve left.
Editor’s note: Climeworks is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
This story was originally published by the Arizona Mirror
When Hualapai Spiritual Leader Frank Mapatis visits Ha’Kamwe’, the tribe’s sacred spring, to conduct any type of ceremony, the area must be completely quiet so that he can hear the water and connect with the land.
Mapatis said that as part of his traditional ways of life, when he is in prayer at Ha’Kamwe’, he hears the water sing, and when it sings, he connects with the creator to conduct ceremonies.
He has provided purification, healing and coming-of-age ceremonies at Ha’Kamwe’ for decades and visits the spring at least twice a month. The spring is also utilized for tribal members’ funeral ceremonies.
Not being able to hear the water, conduct ceremonies or provide traditional teachings to the Hualapai youth who join him during his visits to the spring are among Mapatis’ top concerns for the proposed exploratory drilling lithium project in the Big Sandy River watershed near the tribe’s sacred spring.
“It would stop me from doing ceremony,” he said about the drilling project as he testified in federal court on Sept. 17. He believes drilling in that area will traumatize the earth and water, and he would not want to use that area for ceremonial purposes due to that trauma.
Mapatis said he could continue his ceremonial practices in other places, but they would not have the same impact as doing them at Ha’Kamwe’ because of the water’s healing properties.
“It wouldn’t be as effective in other areas,” he added.
Ha’Kamwe’ is featured in tribal songs and stories about the history of the Hualapai people and their connection to the land. According to the tribe, the historic flow and spring temperature are essential for its traditional uses.
Mapatis was one of several Haluapai tribal members who testified during the Sept. 17 preliminary injunction hearing at the U.S. Federal District Court in Phoenix, where the tribe is fighting to extend the pause on drilling for the Big Sandy Valley Lithium Exploration Project for the duration of the tribe’s lawsuit seeking to block the project entirely.
The project allows a mining company to drill and test more than 100 sites across BLM land surrounding one of the Hualapai Tribe’s cultural properties, among them Ha’Kamwe’, a medicinal spring sacred to the tribe.
Ha’Kamwe’ is located within the Hualapai Tribe’s property known as Cholla Canyon Ranch, and the boundaries of the Big Sandy Valley project nearly surround the entire property. Only one portion of the tribe’s land does not border the drilling project.
The spring is recognized as a traditional cultural property and is eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the tribe’s lawsuit claims that the project’s approval violates the National Environmental Protection Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.
The lawsuit asks for full compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which includes having the BLM take a “hard look” at the exploration activity’s environmental impacts and consider the implications of its actions on historic properties.
The lawsuit claims that BLM approved the mining project without appropriately considering a reasonable range of alternatives or taking a hard look at water resources under the NEPA and moved forward with the project without providing mitigation measures under the NHPA for Ha’Kamwe’ and other resources essential to the tribe, thus violating both acts.
Out of concern for Ha’Kamwe’, the tribe submitted multiple public comments, sent several letters of concern, and participated in tribal consultations with BLM throughout the Big Sandy Valley Lithium Exploration Project planning phase.
Big Sandy, Inc., a subsidiary of Australian mining company Arizona Lithium, leads the project and has sought approval since 2019. Arizona Lithium is not a direct party in the Hualapai Tribe’s lawsuit, but it filed a motion to intervene in the case. Humetewa granted the request in August, allowing the company to defend against the tribe’s efforts to stop the project.
BLM’s approval of the Big Sandy Valley Project allows the mining company to drill and test up to 131 exploration holes across 21 acres of BLM-managed public land to determine whether a full-scale lithium mining operation could be viable.
‘How we connect to our ancestors’
Throughout the hearing, several Hualapai tribal members and supporters sat in the courtroom listening to the hearing while others sat outside the Sandra Day O’Connor courthouse holding signs backing the tribe.
Hualapai tribal member Ivan Bender, 60, from Peach Springs, showed up to the courthouse in support of his community, carrying a flag that said, “Protect Ka’kamwe’. No lithium mining.”
“That spring has a life of its own,” Bender said. “The water source we’re trying to protect is part of our sacred waters.”
The preliminary injunction hearing lasted more than six hours, during which Judge Diane Humetewa heard witness testimony from all parties involved in the case as she weighed the tribe’s request to keep the drilling on hold.
Testimony surrounded the way the project would directly or indirectly impact the Hualapai Tribe’s ability to carry out their cultural and traditional ways of life at Ha’Kamwe’, and whether the drilling that will take place as part of the project will harm the water that feeds into the hot spring.
Ka-voka Jackson, the director of the Hualapai Department of Cultural Resources, was the first witness, and part of her testimony focused on how the Hualapai Tribe utilizes the area for cultural and traditional purposes — and how drilling can directly affect those practices.
Jackson told the court that tribal members often visit Ha’Kamwe for traditional practices or to gather and harvest culturally significant plants from surrounding public lands.
“That is how we connect to our ancestors,” Jackson said.
The tribe’s lawsuit states that the lithium project will create noise, light, vibrations, and other disturbances that will degrade Ha’Kamwe’s character and harm tribal members’ use of the spring for religious and cultural ceremonies.
Jackson said the project’s impacts could cause irreversible damage, affecting the water supply to the sacred springs and destroying the land.
“(It can) create a lot of negative energy and create a hostile environment,” she said.
As part of its environmental assessment, BLM listed several short- and long-term effects, including the temporary disruption to cultural practices at or near Ha’Kamwe’ and an impact on native wildlife and vegetation of up to 21 acres.
But even with these effects included in the assessment, BLM concluded that Phase 3 of the Big Sandy Valley Lithium Exploration Project would not significantly negatively impact the quality of the area, so an environmental impact statement was not needed.
“Visual, noise, and vibration effects from drilling activities would be temporary,” BLM wrote in its final report. “Coordination with and providing notice to the Hualapai Tribe of drilling activities in the vicinity of the Ha’Kamwe’ may reduce impacts to cultural practices at or near the hot spring.”
To provide the court with perspective on the distance of the drilling locations near Ha’Kamwe’, Ivan Martirosov from Navajo Transitional Energy Company testified on behalf of the defendants.
Martirosov is the project manager for the Big Sandy Valley Lithium Exploration Project with Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC), a mining and energy company owned by the Navajo Nation.
NTEC entered into a mining agreement with Arizona Lithium in March. Under this agreement, the Navajo-owned company is responsible for permitting, exploration drilling, mine design, environmental assessments and development for the Big Sandy Lithium Project. NTEC has worked with Arizona Lithium since December 2022.
Martirosov is in charge of overseeing and executing the Big Sandy Lithium Project. He told the court that he walked all approved drilling sites on foot and described the site’s proximity to the Hualapai’s cultural property.
Of the 131 drill sites approved for the project, Martirosov identified 22 with a line of sight to Ha’Kamwe’, a majority located on the north side.
Martirosov said that he was restricted from accessing Ha’Kamwe, noting that the drill sites that do not have a line of sight of the cultural property were due to distance and terrain.
BLM: Concerns are ‘overblown’
At the end of the day-long hearing, Humetewa ordered all parties to file briefs outlining their arguments for why the injunction should or shouldn’t be granted. She said she would issue a ruling in the near future.
During the hearing, Humetewa said that she was tasked with determining what process BLM took in connection to NEPA and their Section 106 process.
The Section 106 process seeks to accommodate historic preservation concerns through consultation among an agency official and other parties interested in the undertaking’s effects on historic properties. The consultation aims to identify historic properties potentially affected by projects and seek ways to avoid, minimize, or mitigate any adverse effects.
The process is usually conducted in four steps: initiating it, identifying historical properties within potentially affected areas, assessing any potential adverse effects on any eligible historic property, and seeking to resolve any adverse effects.
Humetewa said in court that she wants to know where in the records she can find BLM’s engagement in those processes so she can fully understand the discussion about either approving or denying the project. That way, she said, she can understand what considerations went into the final environmental assessment and the NEPA assessment.
Earthjustice Senior Attorney Laura Berglan, who is part of the team representing the Hualapai Tribe, said she feels positive because their team presented all the points they wanted.
“I think it went well and we’ll see how it turns out,” she added.
BLM’s attorneys told Humetewa that the impacts this project will have on Ha’Kamwe have been “vastly overblown,” noting how their expert clearly testified that the water and temperature will not change due to the drilling in the project.
The tribe had its own expert testify. Winfield G. Wright, a certified hydrologist and president of Southwest Hydro-Logic, said he produced a report for the tribe about the water sources that feed into Ha’Kamwe’. Wright said his analysis found that the groundwater system that flows into the hot spring is very fragile, and any disturbances around the area can disrupt the water, the chemistry and the temperature.
Wright said a mixture of shallow and deep waterways feed into Ha’Kamwe’, and the BLM’s environmental assessment simplified identifying where the water comes from by saying a confined lower aquifer feeds it.
“It’s not a confined aquifer,” he said, noting that the lower aquifer in the Big Sandy Valley is not the only source of water for the spring. “The whole valley is connected because of the fractures.”
But Peter Burck, a hydrologist with the BLM, testified that the lower fractures of the lower aquifer are a more likely source of water for Ha’Kamwe’.
Burck said that Wright’s claim the water comes from multiple sources is not conclusive. He said he did not see anything in Wright’s report that would lead him to conclude that the spring water source is a mixture of multiple flows.
He said that the likelihood of the drilling from Phase 3 of the Big Sandy Lithium Project encountering water or affecting the temperature of Ha’Kamwe’ is low.
BLM also told the court that any visual and noise disturbances from the drilling does not qualify as irreparable injury and is instead temporary.
But Jackson said her tribe made a good case that the project would cause irreparable harm because they had people testify who had already experienced it.
“This is irreparable; you can’t go back and redo ceremonies,” she said. “There’s no such thing.”
Jackson said she understands that the court wants more clarification on whether or not the BLM took the appropriate steps under the NEPA and NHPA policies before making a final decision.
“We believe that they didn’t take into consideration the effects on Ha’Kamwe’,” Jackson said, adding that it is eligible for registration on the National Historic Register and a traditional cultural property.
Jackson said it deserves a thorough process included in the NHPA and NEPA.
“I am proud of our people for sticking up for what we believe in and asserting our arguments,” she said. “Now, we just wait.”
Hualapai Chairman Duane Clarke echoed Jackson’s sentiments about how their team and tribal members presented a good case in court, and said he prays that the court’s decision goes with the Hualapai people.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed an amicus brief before the hearing supporting the Hualapai Tribe’s request for the preliminary injunction.
“The sacred Ha’Kamwe’ spring has sustained the Hualapai people for generations, and its protection is critical for the Tribe,” Mayes said in a written statement. “The failure to properly evaluate the impact of this project on such an important water source is unacceptable.”
The amicus brief urges the court to take action to protect Arizona’s water resources from potentially irreversible damage posed by exploratory drilling near the Hualapai Tribe’s sacred spring.
“The BLM must fulfill its obligations under NEPA and fully evaluate this project’s impact on local water resources,” Mayes said. “I am proud to support the Hualapai Tribe’s efforts to protect their precious cultural and water resources.”
The amicus brief highlights the risk of irreparable harm to Arizona’s water resources if exploratory drilling is allowed to proceed without a comprehensive review. It also requests that the court grant a preliminary injunction to stop drilling activities while the case is being heard to protect Arizona’s water sources from potential compromise.
Add lithium to water in a chemistry lab, and you’ll get an incendiary reaction. The same might be said of opening new lithium mines: The prospect can spark conflicts when it comes to water.
With funding from the IRA, DOE and BIL, lithium miners have gained new financial vigor and governmental votes of confidence. Yet some worry what impact this newfound funding will have on the environment.
Through the National Environmental Policy Act, environmental impact statements are required ahead of major projects like mines, although some statements have been criticized as rushed or insufficient. But ultimately, it’s up to companies to choose and monitor their own environmental protections and community agreements, even if they’re collecting federal subsidies.
Lithium mining poses a range of risks to biodiversity and groundwater supplies, depending on the methods used. There are three main types of lithium extraction: brine evaporation, hard rock mining and clay mining.
In brine evaporation, groundwater is first pumped to the surface. There, 90% of it is evaporated away to concentrate the lithium brine, with additional freshwater needed to complete extraction.
Hard rock and clay mining often begin with “dewatering,” or removing groundwater to reach the ore, in addition to needing more water to process the ore. These methods also require chemicals such as sulfuric acid for processing, which in cobalt and copper mining has led to contamination of local water systems.
Concerned about the risks, local residents and environmentalists have resisted new mines with tactics from protests to litigation — but a government-supported lithium boom appears to be underway regardless.
New mines emerge
A Center for Biological Diversity map lists more than 125 lithium extraction projects in the western U.S. alone. Seven are inactive, and the majority are in various stages from exploration to development. Most of the proposed mines are in Nevada, predicted as a future “Silicon Valley of lithium.”
Through its loan support and EV sales incentives, the IRA has made lithium mines more profitable, and less financially risky for companies opening new ones. Several lithium companies, including ioneer, Allkem and Albemarle, lobbied for the IRA’s passage or for provisions within it. A 2023 IRA impact report from S&P Global noted “aggressive mine capacity additions” for lithium planned in countries including the United States, Chile and Australia.
Domestically, most lithium deposits are in the West, where water supplies are already stressed.
“There’s a critical minerals and specifically a lithium rush unfolding, especially, but not exclusively, across the western U.S.,” says Providence College political scientist Thea Riofrancos, who specializes in studying the impact of resource extraction on communities. She adds that some of the mining interest predates the IRA, “but it’s picked up a lot since the IRA, because that sent such clear signals.”
Yet new mines pose risks to the region’s biodiversity. In a lawsuit against a Rover Metals exploration project, the Center for Biological Diversity and Amargosa Conservancy alleged that even exploratory drilling near springs in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada would threaten endangered and endemic species. Active mines can have even bigger impacts.
“We need lithium as a part of our transition off of fossil fuels, but it can’t come at the expense of biodiversity or our most precious protected areas,” Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in announcing the lawsuit. “Some places have to be off-limits to resource extraction, and Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is at the top of the list.”
Lithium Americas’ open pit lithium mine can be seen under construction in Thacker Pass, Nev. on Oct. 10, 2023. The mine’s processing facility was recently awarded a $2.26 billion conditional loan from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. (Noel Lyn Smith / Howard Center for Investigative Journalism)
Credit: Noel Lyn Smith / Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
Thacker Pass on track
The Thacker Pass mine run by Lithium Americas is on track to become the second active lithium mine in the United States. The project in far northern Nevada may be indicative of what’s to come as more government-fueled mines pop up.
The DOE said the loan will provide General Motors with enough lithium for 800,000 electric vehicles a year and “reinforces the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole-of-government approach to strengthening America’s critical materials supply chain, which is essential to building America’s clean transportation future and enhancing our national and energy security.”
Questions about ‘voluntary’ mitigation
Lithium Americas plans to recycle and reuse withdrawn water an average of seven times. Its Phase 1 water consumption is estimated to be about 929 million gallons per year, equal to “around five alfalfa irrigation pivots,” according to the company’s blog.
Lithium Americas purchased existing agricultural water rights, so the operation won’t increase groundwater withdrawal, although existing groundwater withdrawal may still be unsustainable. It has also outlined plans for nearby habitat restoration. A post-mining reclamation plan is intended to reduce long-lived environmental impacts by refilling pits and restoring the surface.
But implementing and tracking mitigation strategies like these is left up to the companies.
“What I think is concerning is the proliferation of lots of voluntary governance mechanisms that companies don’t have to do,” says Riofrancos. “What’s important — and it sounds old-fashioned, maybe — is regulation that’s binding; that’s enforceable; that carries sanctions, fees, punishments, fines, whatever, if the regulations are not obeyed.”
Riofrancos believes such regulations, plus sustained protests against irresponsible mines, could get the mining industry to “do better.”She says the IRA-supported DOE loan program represents a missed opportunity to tie robust regulations to mining projects: “It’s very light on guardrails and requirements for loan recipients.”
It’s also unclear how much mitigation is realistically possible.
“There’s ways to tinker around the edges, but ultimately, there’s no mitigating an open-pit mine,” Donnelly, the Great Basin director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview. “(These mines) cause impacts to the water table, impacts to wildlife, impacts to local and Indigenous communities.”
He believes IRA loans and other federal subsidies help new mines get permitted in spite of environmental risks: “The DOE’s kind of waving a magic wand and saying, ‘This mine is okay to permit.’ ”
But the exact risks of each new lithium mine are tricky to measure. The three different types of mines can have different effects, depending on variables including location, says David Boutt, a hydrogeology researcher and professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Companies are often reluctant to share data that would help scientists evaluate impacts, he says.
“It’s hard to establish a number, like, ‘This one has like a 30% less environmental impact than the others,’ ” Boutt says. “We don’t see these numbers, because a lot of the impacts are local and hard to quantify.”
A billboard on U.S. 95 near Orovada, Nev. warns against Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass lithium mine on Sep. 9, 2023. The group, People of Red Mountain, had opposed construction of the mining operation in Thacker Pass because of environmental concerns and damage to an area sacred to Paiute and Shoshone tribes. Credit: Noel Lyn Smith / Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
Sacred site to become lithium mine
Yet for people living near mining sites, the risks can feel tangible. Dean Barlese, an elder from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, says he’s opposed to the Thacker Pass mine both because it’s at an Indigenous sacred site, and because his people’s lives are intertwined with the local ecosystem.
“A lot of people think it’s just a desert wasteland,” he says. “But the medicines we use are still out there. As Native people, we still gather our food, roots, berries — we’ve survived here for thousands of years.”
Barlese says he’d rather not see mining projects near Indigenous communities at all, regardless of community benefits agreements and environmental mitigation plans. “I would encourage the public to really look into the devastation that getting a bit of lithium does.”
Lithium demand could be reduced if investments were made in public transit and walkable communities, so fewer people were buying cars, Riofrancos says. Although the IRA includes investments in battery recycling, it doesn’t incentivize efforts to reduce surging lithium demand. Instead, it supports extraction to meet the demand, and helps ensure that the extracting companies can profit.
“ ‘Green energy’ is not green energy,” says Barlese. “Money speaks louder than anything else.”
Another possible solution to the mining debate would be an energy transition that uses less lithium.
“One way to reduce demand for lithium (or any battery metals) would be to make smaller batteries, or batteries that are more resource-efficient,” says Riofrancos. Two-thirds of current EV models are SUVs or large vehicles; small- and medium-sized EVs account for only a quarter of EV sales in the United States. Incentivizing smaller vehicles, which can use smaller batteries, could ultimately lead to fewer lithium mines.
Other battery chemistries are another option.
“Given the complexity of getting a permit, of getting the social license, of having everything in place, it’s going to take a long time (to open new mines),” says Boutt, the hydrogeologist. “And perhaps by the time we get to the point where we are developing those resources, we’ll have different battery technology where we’re not as reliant on lithium.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
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