Saturday, July 22, 2023 | 2 a.m.
The Bureau of Land Management has halted a proposed lithium mining operation near Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge over concerns that the drilling could impact the groundwater, the river it feeds and endangered and threatened species that depend on it.
The BLM’s Pahrump office had acknowledged Rover Metals’ plans for exploratory drilling near the refuge in April but rescinded that acknowledgement Thursday.
Last week, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Amargosa Conservancy filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management to stop the drilling.
“We’re immensely relieved that our lawsuit and overwhelming public opposition compelled federal officials to slam the breaks on this project just days before drilling was supposed to start,” Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said.
“We need lithium for our renewable energy transition, but this episode sends a message loud and clear that some places are just too special to drill.”
Rover’s application to the Bureau of Land Management stated some of the drilling would intersect with groundwater.
The company’s plans, initially submitted in January, involve boring 30 holes between 250 and 300 feet below the surface about 1,500 feet north of the wildlife refuge.
Rover will be required to submit a plan of operations with more information to BLM so the bureau can determine if it’s possible to mine without damaging the refuge or surrounding area.
Mason Voehl, executive director of the Amargosa Conservancy, said those holes would also be within 1,500 feet of Fairbanks Spring on the northern end of Ash Meadows, one of the largest springs in the wildlife preserve.
If one of those boreholes intersects the carbonate aquifer under the region, it could threaten the Amargosa River, an intermittent underground river that serves as one of the few water sources in the area, Voehl explained.
“It’s an extensive hydrological system in the heart of the Mojave Desert that sustains a huge diversity of wildlife,” he said.
More than 60 species that inhabit the refuge are unique to the planet and “fundamentally dependent” on the river, Voehl explained. Twenty-five of those are considered threatened or endangered, including the Devils Hole Pupfish, considered the most endangered fish on earth.
“Most water regulations in the area have been developed around sustaining this extremely rare species’ habitat, which is, you know, a crack in the side of a mountain,” he said.
Water flows to Ash Meadows from the Amargosa River from the north and the Spring Mountains north of Las Vegas, he said.
“It’s a critical mixing area for those two sources, and the water from the refugee flows farther south into California as the Amargosa Wild and Scenic River,” Voehl said. “So to be honest, I don’t think we really know what the possible cascading impacts could be on all those resources.”
The area has already narrowly avoided becoming the site of a disaster in the past, when a prior attempt to drill there resulted in the very concerns opponents of the drilling have expressed.
In the early 2000s, monitoring wells the US Geological Survey had drilled in the Ash Meadows area hit the carbonate aquifer at a depth between 200 and 300 feet, Voehl said, triggering an artesian flow that USGS was able to plug before it impacted the aquifer.
In another instance in the Southwest, an area was permanently affected by drilling that went awry.
Voehl cited an incident at Tecopa Hot Spring in California, in which a mining company punctured an underground aquifer at 350 feet, causing an uncontrollable flow of 160-degree Fahrenheit water to come flowing out. Ten thousand cubic yards of gravel wasn’t enough to stem the flow in that case, he said.
That puncture kicked off a chain reaction that led to several surrounding springs drying up. Voehl said he and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are mostly worried about the drilling’s impact on the major springs in the northern part of the refuge, but they’re also concerned a puncture in the wrong place could cause a serious dewatering event that would compromise the entire refuge.
“That’s our worst-case scenario here,” he said. “It really just takes one of those boreholes, especially those located close to the refugee, to go wrong and hit the aquifer to cause that kind of dewatering event that could have absolutely catastrophic effects on everything downstream.”
