US judge refuses to block Nevada lithium mine construction, green energy fights continue, It’s the newest development in a series of high-stakes legal battles that pit environmentalists and others against the so-called “green energy” project President Joe Biden’s administration is pushing to help speed the nation’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
- This Green energy project is managed by President Joe Biden to push to help speed the nation’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
- The ruling marks a significant victory for Canada-based Lithium Americas Corp. at its subsidiary’s project near Nevada’s border with Oregon and a setback.
- United Stae Stage( U.S.) judge has ordered the government to revisit part of its environmental review of a lithium mine planned in Nevada but denied opponents’ efforts to block it in a ruling the developer says clears the way for construction at the nation’s largest known deposit of the rare metal widely used in rechargeable batteries.
- The White House says the mine on the Nevada-Oregon line is critical to ramping up efforts to produce raw materials for electric vehicle batteries.
- U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno concluded late Monday that the opponents had failed to prove the project the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved in January 2021 would harm wildlife habitat, degrade groundwater, or pollute the air.
“While this case encapsulates the tensions among competing interests and policy goals, this order does not somehow pick a winner based on policy considerations,” Du warned in the introduction of her verdict.
Speaking to apnews, Other projects that face legal challenges in U.S. court in Nevada include a proposed lithium mine where a desert wildflower has been declared endangered, and a proposed geothermal power plant on federal land near habitat for an endangered toad.
Du handed a partial victory to environmentalists in agreeing that the Bureau of Land Management had failed to determine whether the company had valid mining rights on 1,300 acres (526 hectares) adjacent to the mine site where Lithium Nevada intends to bury waste rock.
But she denied the opponents’ request to vacate the agency’s approval of the overall project’s Record of Decision, which would have prohibited any construction from beginning until a new record of decision was issued.
Environmentalists clung to the lone part of her decision favorable to them. That part incorporates a recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a fight over the Mining Law of 1872 in a case in Arizona that could prove more onerous to mining companies that want to dispose of their waste on neighboring federal lands.