LAS VEGAS - An enormous lithium mine in the Nevada desert was granted final government approval in a project the miner predicts will quadruple US production of a mineral critical to the renewable energy revolution.
Operations at Rhyolite Ridge will produce enough lithium to supply the batteries for more than 370,000 electric vehicles every year, Australian operator Ioneer said.
The plant will create 500 construction jobs over the next few years and 350 jobs during its decades of extraction, the company said.
"There are few deposits in the world as impactful as Rhyolite Ridge," said Ioneer Executive Chairman James Calaway, heralding the permit issued Thursday by the Bureau of Land Management.
The company's managing director, Bernard Rowe, said construction would begin next year.
"This permit gives us a license to commence construction in 2025 and begin our work in creating hundreds of good-paying rural jobs, generating millions in tax revenue for Esmeralda County, and bolstering the domestic production of critical minerals," he said.
"By greenlighting this mine the Bureau of Land Management is abandoning its duty to protect endangered species like Tiehm's Buckwheat and it's making a mockery of the Endangered Species Act," said Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group.
"We need lithium for the energy transition, but it can't come with a price tag of extinction."
Ioneer admits that over the years the mine is in operation around a fifth of the flower's habitat will be directly affected.
But the company, which has spent $2.5-million researching the plant, says mining will not affect its survival, insisting their experiments show it is already growing well in greenhouses.