Kudos to Earth Justice for filing their petition to stop the rezoning effort by Wolfden to mine Pickett Mountain. Supporters of the petition say a metallic mineral mine there could put at risk an “important place not only of ecological significance, but also cultural and historical significance.” The risks cited in the BDN article, “Conservation groups trying to stop mining project at Pickett Mountain,” apply to every place in Maine where a metallic mineral mine has been or could be proposed. Everywhere, acid mine drainage leaking into Maine waters threatens fish habitats and thus the fishing industry, an important economic driver in our state. Everywhere, “Mining threatens the tribes’ cultural connection to the land” in that the tribes as original occupants of Maine have those connections every place. Everywhere in Maine’s wet climate—growing wetter every year—mining threatens toxic pollution of our waters. Let us hope this petition begins a public reexamination of economic and cultural costs of metallic mineral mining anywhere in Maine.
ALICE ON PEACE & JUSTICE
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Tuesday, June 13, 2023
Lithium Mining Harms the Environment
LD 1363, “An Act to Support Extraction of Common Minerals by
Amending the Maine Metallic Mineral Mining Act,” ought NOT to pass. This bill
would allow open-pit mining of spodumene, the metallic mineral that contains
lithium used in batteries to power consumer electronics and electric vehicles.
Inspired in 2012 by proposals to mine for precious metals at
Bald Mountain in my home town area, I have been researching risks and benefits of
metallic mineral mining for more than a decade. Early on, I asked proposers,
“What is an example of metallic mineral mining operation that has not caused
serious pollution?” One geologist when confronted with evidence that his
example was in fact contaminating surrounding waters said, “Well, it depends on
which scientist you believe.”
Through the years since 2012, including through the passage
of the 2017 law, questionably said to be “the strictest in the nation” (I haven’t
seen evidence for that), I continued to ask and still have not found one
example of a mine that has not caused serious pollution. The 2017 law is not strict
enough either. It allows contamination of ground water in the “mining area,” unlimited
3-acre open pits, and has other problems harmful to the environment and human
health. That law should be strengthened or replaced with a regulatory framework
that prevents harm rather than tries to punish it after environmental harm occurs
such as one proposed by Ralph
Chapman, scientist and 4-term member of the Maine legislature.
With LD 1363, I ask again for an example of a lithium mining
operation safe for the environment. Again, I find no satisfactory answers and alarming
evidence of environmental destruction from lithium mining. An incident reported
by the Institute
for Energy Research November 12, 2020, provides a striking image of
environmental contamination caused by lithium mining: In Tibet, “May 2016, dead fish were found in
the waters of the Liqi River, where a toxic chemical leaked from the Ganzizhou
Rongda Lithium mine. Cow and yak carcasses were also found floating downstream,
dead from drinking contaminated water. It was the third incident in seven years
due to a sharp increase in mining activity.”
And at the same site, “In Australia and North America,
lithium [. . .] mined from rock [. . .]requires the use of chemicals in order
to extract it in a useful form. Research in Nevada found impacts on fish as far
as 150 miles downstream from a lithium processing operation.”
Guillermo
Gonzalez, a lithium battery expert from the University of Chile, in
a 2009 interview says about lithium mining, “Like any mining process, it is
invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes
the earth and the local wells[. . . .] This isn’t a green solution – it’s not a
solution at all.”
By providing exemptions in the law for lithium mining, LD
1363 would further weaken the current Metallic Mineral Mining Act and should
not pass into law. Instead the legislature and the Board of Environmental
Protection should focus on how to prevent known harms to the environment and
human health that come with all metallic mineral mining.
Sources:
Testimony: https://legislature.maine.gov/bills/getTestimonyDoc.asp?id=10016951
Research: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact