Court to hear appeal over Biden-backed Nevada lithium mine opposed by tribes, environmentalists

For the first time since it blocked construction of an Arizona copper mine last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear oral arguments in a two-year-old legal battle with striking similarities to the Arizona case. The Nevada mine is in the works near the Oregon line and would involve extraction of the silvery-white metal used in electric-vehicle batteries.

Conservationists say the open pit mine, deeper than the length of a football field, will pollute the groundwater and destroy precious habitat for sage grouse, pronghorn antelope and other species in violation of environmental laws. “Our people couldn’t return to Thacker Pass for fear of being killed in 1865, and now in 2023 we can’t return or we’ll be arrested,” said Bethany Sam, a descendant of one of the massacre victims and spokesperson for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony who was among those arrested.Lithium Americas has said reserves at the Thacker Pass mine would support lithium for more than 1.5 million electric vehicles per year for 40 years.

That April 2022 ruling upended the government’s long-held position that established mining claims automatically convey the same mineral rights under the 1872 Mining Law to adjacent lands where tailings and other waste will be buried. Biden administration officials said last month they would not challenge the 9th Circuit’s Rosemont ruling but the U.S. Interior Department’s solicitor general issued a new opinion on the reach of the mining law and the bureau submitted additional evidence it says satisfies the requirement that valuable minerals exist where the waste dump is planned.

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