Ben Anderson: Thacker Pass: Modern Mining Miracle or the Latest Chapter in Neocolonial Extraction?
Gary Mckinney, a Mcdermitt Pauite descendant and enrolled member of the Duck Valley Shoshone Paiute Tribes, leans forward in his chair. Chin tilted up in defiance, his dark eyes search our faces as he asks: “How come we don't matter? Why? How come our families are throwaways?...What about the cancer? What about the dirty water? What about these abandoned mines around here?... EV mandate, the green energy transition, renewable energy is all bullshit. Excuse my language, but…that's just the way I am. I'm not afraid to say what I need to say anymore. Our lives depend on it.” His words ring eerily outward, poisoning dreams of “green” futures with the reality of violence. The Thacker Pass Lithium project has been promised as a modern mining miracle, set to usher in the new era of energy. To Gary and others in his community, it's a promise filled with cracks. It’s fissures seeping toxic sludge and long silenced screams.
15 million years ago, 1000 cubic kilometers of earth took to the sky. Molten rock and ash exploded in a cataclysmic event, eviscerating everything in its path. The aftermath was a ring, 28 miles long and 22 miles wide. In its center today, lies the largest single lithium deposit in the world. But long, long before lithium ever mattered, there were people. The Mcdermit Caldera or Peehee Mu’huh, as it is known in the Numu language, has been sacred to Shoshone, Bannock, and Paiute peoples since time immemorial. Descendants of which, form twelve tribes who trace significant connections to the land.
Standing on the eastern edge of the caldera, Myron Smart addresses our group. “Good morning you all. I just wanted to say this little bit, not too much.” Myron is an elder of the Fort Mcdermitt Paiute and member of the People of Red Mountain, an intertribal activist group. He exudes a patient humility as his grandchildren listen restlessly beside him. Taking a measured breath, he begins to speak:
“Way, way back in time….You know, our people were connected to the land and to this,” he gestures towards the caldera, “the wind, the spirits and the creators.” “They lived off of the land. They did their harvesting at a certain time, and then they had the winters…They had gatherings… they sang songs to make it rain…they had certain songs for all the four seasons…everything was really good.”
There was water, and there was life. Mule deer, pronghorn antelope, sage grouse, and golden eagles called the sagebrush home. It wasn’t perfect but people had what they needed. All of that began to change when western settlers arrived.
From where we sit on the caldera’s rim, the slope drops suddenly down into a broad basin, cheatgrass giving way to stands of old growth sage that stretch on for miles. To Myron it’s important that we know that the land below us isn't just sacred, it’s also a grave. On September 12, 1865 the 1rst Nevada Cavalry massacred 31 men, women, children, and elders there. Myron’s grandmother was one of the only survivors. “She was…12 years old at that time…she said you could hear women, children crying…screaming, people just running everywhere.”
But one massacre wasn’t enough. Next came the boarding schools, and eventually the reservation. “When the government came… they were gathering people up…like a bunch of sheep or a bunch of cattle…pushing everybody onto the fort…Afterwards…they took little kids… like my grandkids, they took them away…off out into a boarding school...They didn't want us to speak our own language at the boarding school. They didn't want us to use our songs at the boarding school. They didn't want to hear us make our prayers…They cut everybody's hair. The soldiers…raped little kids, little girls, little boys. It didn't matter to them. We didn't have anybody there to protect us…To this day, the same government is doing the same thing to us.” Myron’s last statement sits heavy in the air and its evidence lies right beneath our feet; a water pipe running west, from the Quinn River Valley straight to the beginnings of Lithium Nevada’s 2.9 billion dollar Thacker Pass mining project.
A day earlier and about 20 miles east, Randal Burns, chief geologist for Lithium Nevada, fires up a core saw. The screeching hiss of its rotating blade explodes into the air before he quickly turns it off. “I've said it time and time again, if it can't be grown. It has to be mined, I don't think enough people appreciate that.” We’re gathered in a small concrete floored building filled with hundreds of drilled core samples from the caldera. The dust of ancient sediments flavoring the stale air. Randal has just spent the day teaching us about the geology, history, and operations of the Thacker Pass Mine. He detailed community outreach programs, environmental impact studies, and the lengthy permitting process of the mine. According to him, the mine won’t have a meaningful impact on the land, there was no massacre at Thacker Pass, and the Mcdermitt Paiute Tribe is on board, at least on paper. Randal knows mining impacts intimately and in his mind, Thacker Pass is the best it can be done. “I hope you guys walk away from here with a more positive view on mining, at least modern mining, there's no amount of apologies that can be given for some of the past environmental sins, for sure, but in the US anyway since the late 80s, when mining reform occurred, you shouldn't have any bad mines.” Randal’s sincere assurance is contagious, and hearing it from him, it all sounds pretty convincing. But even if this project is different from the mines of the past, are there truly no risks?
Steven Emerman, owner of Malach Consulting and member of the U.S. Society on Dams’ Tailings Dam Committee, is an independent hydrologist who has spent decades studying the impacts of mining projects around the world. To him, Lithium Americas’ tailings storage plan is an exercise in “reckless creativity”. In a report commissioned by the Great Basin Resource Watch, he argues that the tailings storage relies upon an untested technology, justified with data based on single input, best case scenarios, without precautions for if things go wrong. The result is that a supposedly zero discharge facility could leak “tens to thousands of gallons per minute and would continue for decades after closure with no provisions for management of the seepage”.
To Myron and other members of his community, the consequences of water contamination hit close to home, in fact, they nearly destroyed it. Ceasing operation in 1970, the Cordero Mercury mine left a devastating legacy for the town of Mcdermitt and tribal people in the region. Mining waste was placed on roads, in playgrounds, and around dozens of homes. Cancer and poisoned water followed. It wasn’t until 2013 that the EPA removed the waste, and to this day the water remains contaminated. In their negotiations with Lithium Americas, the tribe argued that their water supply should be fixed. The corporation refused, despite the fact that it would only cost them 0.02% of one year’s profits.
As much as one might hope that Lithium Americas is negotiating in good faith, their track record and the power dynamic at play cast an ominous tone. One of its subsidiaries, Minera Exar, has been named in a report by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center citing 4 separate allegations of human rights violations surrounding its operations in Argentina. Additionally, a report published by Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales found that Minera Exar failed to provide free and informed consent to indigenous communities impacted by their mining activities. Further, a Washington Post expose documented a consistent pattern of leaving communities impoverished while raking in massive profits.
Bottom line, there are many concerns being levied and few answers about how things will go. Will the groundwater be contaminated? Will toxic dust blow up to the reservation? Will the already overallocated watershed be able to sustain increased withdrawal? Environmental catastrophe aside, do people in the community want this or even actually understand what’s happening? What about the 11 other tribes with cultural ties to Thacker Pass, why weren’t they consulted? There isn’t a consensus. What is clear is that Lithium Americas is willing to gamble with the lives of tribal peoples, disturbing sacred ground to extract billions in exchange for breadcrumbs. An electrified future has a price, and right now indigenous people are, once again, footing the bill.
“They use us like a doormat. You know, if they don't want to listen to you, they'll close the door on you. They'll walk in and then they're going to wipe their feet like this on you.” Myron says, scraping his boots back and forth across the obsidian speckled gravel, “walk off, and then think it's okay. We're people too. We're all human.”
Additional Resources:
https://gbrw.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Exhibit-4-Thacker_Pass_Report_Emerman_Revised2.pdf
https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/howardcenter/lithium/stories/indigenous.html
Lithium extraction in Argentina: a case study on the social and environmental impacts
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/tossed-aside-in-the-lithium-rush/
Final Environmental Impact Statement: https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projects/1503166/200352542/20030633/250036832/Thacker%20Pass_FEIS_Chapters1-6_508.pdf