This story was updated at 3:14 p.m. EDT.
A key environmental group blasted the Interior Department for approving a plan to build an open-pit lithium and boron mine within the footprint of an endangered flower in rural Nevada, arguing it will doom the rare plant.
The Center for Biological Diversity took aim at the Bureau of Land Management’s release of a lengthy, highly anticipated final environmental impact statement for Ioneer’s Rhyolite Ridge hard rock lithium mine and chemical processing plant. The agency is expected to issue a final decision next month.
Ioneer is pursuing one of the largest proposed lithium mines and processing plants in the U.S. to feed a coming electric vehicle boom, and has insisted that protecting Tiehm’s buckwheat wouldn’t derail its plans to build the project and begin production as early as 2028. The federally backed project would produce lithium, a critical EV battery ingredient, for companies such as Panasonic, Toyota, Ford and others.
