Across the American West, a new mining boom is taking shape as the United States rushes to secure lithium, copper, uranium and other critical minerals. The most visible test of that push is Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, the largest U.S. lithium-mining project developed in decades, a site more expansive than Manhattan that has become a flash point over what domestic mineral production will mean for the environment and for communities living nearby.
Thacker Pass was initially driven by the clean-energy transition. Today, demand for critical minerals is increasingly tied to their role in powering artificial-intelligence data centers. The project faces opposition from the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, whose members say it would destroy sacred Indigenous sites. Climate advocates have also struggled to balance the project’s potential to produce lithium, a key component of some rechargeable-battery technology used in electric vehicles, against the risks mining poses to local land and water.
Despite those concerns, Thacker Pass is grinding ahead alongside dozens of other U.S. mining projects taking shape under a federal fast-track program. The federal effort includes about 40 projects and reflects a rare area of agreement across political camps: The U.S. must bring some mining and processing capacity home. Much of the world’s critical-mineral supply chain currently runs through China, leaving the U.S. exposed to geopolitical pressure. «It is the most important emerging energy-security question,» says Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Whether these projects succeed will help determine whether the U.S. and its allies can insulate themselves from those challenges, as well as power the transition to renewable energy.
The new development is unfolding, however, against the backdrop of older mining regions still paying for past extraction. In and around Picher, Okla., piles of chat left over from historic lead and zinc mines dominate the landscape. Windblown dust and rain carry lead and other heavy metals from the piles into the surrounding environment. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that cleanup of the remaining chat at the Tar Creek Superfund site could take another 50 years. Rebecca Jim, executive director of the Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, a community organization in the area, has spent years advocating for residents affected by legacy mining pollution in the Tar Creek region. Whole communities, including parts of Miami and Afton, Okla., continue to live inside the Superfund site.
Residents say the old mines have left a lasting health toll. Jill Micka, who grew up swimming in Tar Creek, believed childhood exposure to lead contributed to her kidney disease; she later required dialysis and died in December 2024. Billy Forbis, who grew up in nearby Picher, a former lead- and zinc-mining center evacuated in 2009 because of contamination and unsafe conditions, has gone on to help other community members struggling with addiction after recovering from methamphetamine addiction himself. Abandoned tunnels and shafts in the area, which flooded with groundwater after mining ended in the 1970s, still carry dissolved metals into the creek.
Newer proposals raise similar questions. At Oak Flat in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, the Resolution Copper project could become one of the largest copper mines in North America, supplying copper for electric vehicles, power grids and other infrastructure. But the site is sacred to the San Carlos Apache and other Tribal Nations, and Dr. Wendsler Nosie, founder of the Apache-led nonprofit Apache Stronghold, has led opposition to the mine. In New Mexico, near the historic Mount Taylor uranium mine outside Grants, the proposed La Jara Mesa uranium mine is advancing through federal permitting as part of the FAST-41 program. The Mount Taylor region contains one of the country’s largest known uranium reserves.
In California, Carmen Lucas, a 90-year-old member of the Kwaaymii tribe, has spent more than two decades fighting mining developments. She is now championing opposition to a project to tap a lithium reserve beneath the southern end of the Salton Sea, where reserves are estimated to be worth more than $500 billion. Lucas argues that developers treat the land as if it were empty, ignoring the people and heritage already there. «Washington is looking at the Imperial Valley and saying that’s just a desert, that’s just wasteland,» she says. She also points to a longer pattern of government actions against California Indians. «It has been mandated by the United States government and the state of California to annihilate the California Indians since the Gold Rush,» she says. «And I’m still watching it today.»
The conflicts are not unique to the U.S. Globally, more than half of the minerals needed for the energy transition are on or near land belonging to Indigenous or other land-connected peoples, according to research published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Historically, these communities have often been displaced or left with polluted air and water even after mines close. In Oklahoma, generations have suffered from mining remnants that seeped into soil and groundwater, contributing to neurological damage and stunting development in local children.
Community buy-in is often the biggest factor determining whether a major mining project can move forward. The rapid pace of today’s development will set new precedents for what companies must do, or could get away with, when they seek to build megamines in the United States. For now, there are no easy answers.