US agency review says Nevada lithium mine can co-exist with endangered flower

RENO, Nev. (AP) — U.S. land managers said Thursday they've completed a final environmental review of a proposed Nevada lithium mine that would supply minerals critical to electric vehicles and a clean energy future while still protecting an endangered wildflower.

“This environmental analysis is the product of the hard work of experts from multiple agencies to ensure that we protect species as we provide critical minerals to the nation,” Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement Thursday.

The agency's final environmental impact statement is subject to a 30-day comment period. It's likely to face legal challenges from environmentalists who say it clearly violates the Endangered Species Act and will cause the desert flower Tiehm's buckwheat to go extinct at the only place it exists in the world near the California line halfway between Reno and Las Vegas.

The Australian mining company pushing the project said completion of the review is a “significant milestone” in a six-year-long effort to build the Rhyolite Ridge mine. It anticipates production to begin as early as 2028 of the element key to manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles.

“Today's issuance not only advances the Rhyolite Ridge project but brings the United States closer to a more secure and sustainable source of domestic critical minerals,” said Bernard Rowe, managing director of Ioneer Ltd.

Opponents of the project say it’s the latest example of President Joe Biden's administration running roughshod over U.S. protections for native wildlife, rare species and sacred tribal lands in the name of slowing climate change by reducing reliance on fossil fuels and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The Fish and Wildlife Service added the 6-inch-tall (15-centimeter-tall) wildflower with yellow and cream-colored blooms to the list of U.S. endangered species on Dec. 14, 2022, citing mining as the biggest threat to its survival.

The bureau said Thursday the mine could potentially produce enough lithium to supply nearly 370,000 electric vehicles a year. By 2030, worldwide demand for lithium is projected to have grown six times compared to 2020.

“The Rhyolite Ridge project represents what we can do when we work together — with industry, states, tribes and stakeholders — to ensure the swift consideration and adaptation of projects to fulfill our energy needs while respecting cultural and ecologically sensitive areas,” said Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy secretary of the bureau's parent Interior Department.

The bureau said in announcing its completion of the review that details of the final EIS would be published Friday in the Federal Register.

The Center for Biological Diversity has been fighting the mine since its inception and has vowed to do whatever it takes to block it.

Patrick Donnelly, the center’s Great Basin director, said Thursday that despite the administration's assurances the flower would be protected, the mining plan has changed little from an earlier draft and would still destroy much of the plant's critical habitat.

“It’s an outrage that the BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service capitulated to the demands of a mining company whose plans clearly run afoul of the Endangered Species Act,” he said.

“These agencies are entrusted with preserving our biodiversity for future generations, and instead they’re turning this flower’s only known habitat into an industrial site, condemning it to extinction," he said.

The bureau insisted Ioneer had adjusted its latest blueprint to minimize destruction of habitat for the plant, which grows in eight sub-populations that combined cover approximately 10 acres (4 hectares) — an area equal to the size of about eight football fields.

“We are eager to get to work in contributing to the domestic supply of critical materials essential for the transition to a clean energy future,” Ioneer Executive Chairman James Calaway said Thursday.

In addition to scaling back encroachment on the plant, Ioneer's strategy includes a controversial propagation plan to grow and transplant flowers nearby — something conservationists say won’t work.

Nevada is home to the only existing lithium mine in the U.S. and another is currently under construction near the Oregon line 220 miles (354 kilometers) north of Reno. That Lithium Americas mine at Thacker Pass survived numerous legal challenges from environmentalists and Native American tribes who said it would destroy lands they considered sacred where their ancestors were massacred by U.S. troops in 1865.

FILE - A greenhouse used to grow Tiehm's buckwheat is shown in Gardnerville, Nevada, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Scott Sonner, file)

FILE - Botanist Florencia Peredo Ovalle holds a sample of Tiehm's buckwheat in her greenhouse in Gardnerville, Nevada, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Scott Sonner, file)

FILE - This photo provided by the Center for Biological Diversity shows a Tiehm's buckwheat plant near the site of a proposed lithium mine in Nevada, May 22, 2020. (Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity via AP, File)

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The head of the U.S. Postal Service expressed frustration Thursday with ongoing criticism by election officials of how it handles mail ballots while also seeking to reassure voters that it's ready to handle an expected crush of those ballots this fall.

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told reporters that it's difficult for the Postal Service to address “generalities” about perceived problems and said some election officials don’t fully understand its efforts to deliver ballots in time to be counted.

He said the service will collect and deliver mail ballots more frequently in the days before the Nov. 5 presidential election and would keep processing centers open the Sunday before Election Day. The Postal Service, he said, would take extraordinary measures to “rescue” ballots that are mailed late and at risk of missing state deadlines to be received by election offices.

Elections officials have said for weeks that they are concerned about the Postal Service's readiness. They've cited ballots arriving late or without the postmarks required by some state laws during the primary season.

"We engage in heroic efforts intended to beat the clock,” DeJoy told reporters during a virtual news conference.

"These efforts are designed to be used only when the risk of deviating from our standard processes is necessary to compensate for the ballot being mailed so close to a state’s deadline,” he added. “This is commonly misunderstood in the media and even by election officials.”

DeJoy and state and local election officials do agree on one thing: They are urging voters who want to use mail ballots to return them as early as possible and at least seven days before a state's deadline. DeJoy also encouraged voters to go to post office counters to get their ballots postmarked.

“I want to see high turnout and low drama,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat and the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said Thursday.

In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, election officials reported sending just over 69 million ballots in the mail, a substantial increase from four years earlier.

While the numbers this year may be smaller, many voters have embraced mail voting and come to rely on it.

NASS and the National Association of State Election Directors told DeJoy in a letter last week that the Postal Service had not fixed persistent problems that could disenfranchise some voters.

“It's extremely troubling that the USPS dismissed our concerns about disenfranchising voters by failing to postmark and timely deliver ballots, rather than working with us to find solutions,” Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican and the past NASS president, said this week.

On Thursday, DeJoy cited a report from the Postal Service’s inspector general at the end of July saying about 98.2% of the 10.3 million ballots mailed to election officials from Dec. 1, 2023, through April 1, 2024, arrived on time.

Schwab has said about 1,000 mail ballots from the state's Aug. 6 primary election couldn't be counted because they arrived too late or were not postmarked.

In Lawrence, in northeastern Kansas, Jamie Miller discovered that her primary election ballot took more than three weeks to go from the mailbox outside her home to her local election office, only 3.4 miles away.

She filled it out and left it for her mail carrier on July 20, the morning after she received it. The ballot envelope was postmarked July 22 but didn't get to election officials until Aug. 12, three days after the deadline for counting it.

Miller, a 53-year-old disabled Army veteran, plans to vote in person in November.

“I’m not going to give another person the opportunity to silence my voice again,” she said. “And it definitely should not be silenced by my federal government.”

DeJoy told reporters that if postal workers see a “stray” ballot, “they jump on it," but the service's monitoring systems might miss it if it's handled outside normal processing.

He also noted the difficulty of keeping pace with vastly different state election laws, regarding everything from postmark requirements to deadlines for returning mailed ballots.

“To operate successfully and even legally, we must have consistent policies nationwide,” DeJoy said Thursday. “But there are 8,000 election jurisdictions and 50 states who are far from uniform in their election laws and practices.”

In Kansas' most populous county, Johnson County, in the Kansas City area, Election Commissioner Fred Sherman said it's probably unrealistic to expect that no ballots will arrive late or without postmarks.

But he added: “If it’s your ballot, it’s not acceptable.”

Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed to this report.

FILE - U.S. Postal Service trucks park outside a post office in Wheeling, Ill., Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

FILE - Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, March 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)