Fairbanks Springs in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. (Credit: Dominic Gentilcore)

This story was reported and published as part of a collaboration between the Nevada Current and Nevada Public Radio. You can hear the audio version at knpr.org/podcast/desert-air.

Amargosa Valley residents file into seats on a basketball court in an aging community center with water-stained ceilings. The residents attending the Amargosa Valley Town Board meeting in February are the picture of rural living: plaid shirts, denim, mud-stained boots, and baseball caps with American flags and eagles.

Over the next year, the survival of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge — a critical wetland habitat in the Amargosa Desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas — will come down to them. At least that’s the pitch Mason Voehl, executive director of the Amargosa Conservancy, makes to these locals as they snack on cookies.

“We’re a small organization. It’s me and like 10 volunteers,” Voehl tells his audience on a damp Thursday night in the Amargosa Valley. “We are counting on the communities of the Amargosa to join with us.”

But news travels fast in Nevada’s rural towns. Word of Canada-based Rover Critical Minerals’ (formerly Rover Metals) new plan to drill as many as 21 boreholes less than a mile from the refuge — at depths of up to 150 feet — in search of valuable lithium deposits had already reached the valley.

Colette Johnson, a slight 56-year-old woman with a neat shoulder-length bob, quickly marches up to the podium and vows to sign any petition opposing the exploratory lithium project planned 25 miles from her home.

“I would be more than willing to get involved in this,” she says.

Coordinated resistance to mining is new for the residents of Amargosa Valley, who have avoided large-scale development near their homes for decades. For better or worse, the town’s rural nature had siloed residents from the bureaucratic machinations of the larger world. That changed in the summer of 2023, when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved Rover Critical Minerals’ exploratory mineral drilling operation. The proposal included plans to drill within 2,000 feet of Fairbanks Spring, a critical habitat for the endangered Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish and the Ash Meadows speckled dace.

“They have found lithium everywhere. There are a thousand other places you can mine it,” says Mike Cottingim, the Amargosa Town Clerk and a member of the Amargosa Town Board. “Why do you have to put the watershed and all those endangered species at risk when there’s all these other places?”

For Johnson, Cottingim, and other valley residents gathered in the community center, the overarching question is: What can they do to make Rover Critical Minerals leave for good?

The disappointing answer from Voehl is, not much. Unlike other extractive industries, hard rock mining on public land is governed by a congressional law passed more than a century ago — before neighboring Arizona, Utah, and Idaho were even states: the General Mining Law of 1872.

Under this law, any party that finds valuable minerals on public land that can be extracted for profit has the right to stake its claim. Once located, marked, and recorded with the state, a valid claim essentially establishes property rights to the resource in question, meaning a claim can’t be revoked by anyone, not even the federal government.

In July, the Amargosa Conservancy and Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit, pressuring the BLM to pull its approval of Rover Critical Minerals’ exploration project. An agency review found that exploratory boreholes just north of the refuge would likely cause damage to the groundwater that feeds the meadows and could potentially harm threatened and endangered species that rely on the refuge for survival.

That decision, however, did not invalidate Rover Critical Minerals’ mining claim on the land. Half a year later, in December, and with a few tweaks to the original plan, the company submitted a new proposal. Dubbed “Let’s Go Lithium Project,” it would span more than 5,853 acres south of Amargosa Valley, on a former lakebed between the town’s community center and the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, according to the company’s operation plan.

The actual exploration activity for the project — trenches, drilling, borehole excavation, orange construction fencing, scrub clearing — would be limited to less than five acres. The new proposal also includes drilling within a few thousand feet of Fairbanks Spring, home to two federally listed endangered fishes.

According to a statement by BLM after rescinding approval of Rover’s original plan, if the company wants to go ahead with exploratory drilling, then its plan of operations will need to withstand the rigorous National Environmental Policy Act impact assessment process, and include consultation with federal wildlife managers, as stipulated in the Endangered Species Act. It’s a tall order, but not impossible.

“Rover metals has not gone away,” Voehl told Amargosa Valley residents at their February town meeting. “We kind of hoped after the summer that the project was so unpopular, they might think twice and invest their capital somewhere else.”

Instead, he continued, “They are doubling down on this project in the Amargosa Valley. So, they’re very serious about this. They’re not just gonna go away.”

Despite the smaller footprint of Rover Critical Minerals’ new operation plan — or the fact that the federal government has yet to approve it — residents’ original concern remains the same; namely, risk to their water.

Declining groundwater levels have gradually depleted springs and seeps in Middle Amargosa near Shoshone and Tecopa. Data shows that groundwater use within the Amargosa River watershed has steadily increased over the past 25 years, due to concurrent residential development in Pahrump and thirsty agricultural operations.

Amargosa Valley resident Johnson says you don’t need to look further than her neighbor, Ponderosa Dairies, and its sprawling acres of grass, alfalfa, and dairy cows to see where the water’s going. Water wouldn’t be withdrawn from the project’s boreholes, but according to Rover Critical Minerals operation plan, any water they do need for drilling would be sourced from the manager of the dairy, Ed Goedhart, former Nevada assemblyman.

“My well went dry, I mean I’m sucking sand and air. It’s very important for us to be aware of where our water is going, and how that’s going to impact us individually,” Johnson told her neighbors, who were listening attentively in the community center. “When sand comes out of your pipes, you know there’s something wrong. When it starts spitting air, there’s something wrong. All of us are heavily impacted by what’s going on.”

For most of its 185-mile course, the Amargosa River travels underground, but in the stretches that reach the surface, the river supports endemic species that depend entirely on springs fed by fragile groundwater aquifers. The Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is one of those stretches offering sanctuary to life along the river’s watershed. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the refuge has the highest concentration of endemic species in the U.S, a dozen of which are listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened or endangered.

In 1972, overpumping by developers in the central Amargosa Desert caused water levels to fall in Devils Hole, which temporarily reduced habitat for the endangered Devils Hole pupfish by 85 percent, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report. That same report found that if pumping in the central Amargosa Desert continued at current rates, it had the potential to dry up Ash Meadows over the long term. The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service listed groundwater “reduction and manipulation” within central Amargosa Desert as a major threat to the endangered Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish, because of the system’s inherent complexity and fragility. The Tecopa pupfish is one of many casualties of groundwater disturbance in the valley. The small Nevada fish was completely wiped out from its one and only habitat, Tecopa Hot Springs, after a developer made extensive alterations to the springs while building bathhouses around them.

Andrew Zdon, a geologist hired by the Amargosa Conservancy, is principal investigator for an ongoing, long-term study on the Amargosa Basin’s hydrology. He argues some of Rover Critical Minerals’ boreholes will almost certainly reach the water table and cause “irreparable harm to groundwater-fed springs and groundwater dependent surface-water features, including the refuge springs.”

All life in the Amargosa Desert depends on the large underground aquifers that contain and transport water protected from the oppressive desert sun. Some of those aquifers are close to the surface of the ground. Groundwater in those aquifers can be under great pressure from the rock and clay above, meaning below-ground drilling or construction can potentially puncture that protective layer, leading water to burst up through the ground. Uncontrolled flows can damage property, infrastructure, the ground surface, the surrounding environment, or the aquifer itself. And once a flow has gotten out of control, it can be difficult or even impossible to stop.

But Rover Critical Minerals has repeatedly rejected the claim that their exploratory drilling would damage any aquifers in the area.

“The plan was developed to ensure that there will be no impact to the critical water tables and sensitive biological resources in the Amargosa basin,” Rover Critical Minerals CEO Judson Culter said in December, after going public with the company’s new plan.

The company’s management and environmental permitting partner, Universal Engineering Sciences, “feel confident that sustainable lithium mining can be supported in the Amargosa Valley,” Culter added.

Exploration is typically the least environmentally damaging stage of mining, but even shallow drilling in the Amargosa Basin groundwater system can have severe, unpredictable, and far-reaching impacts.

Borehole Spring in Inyo County, California, near Tecopa Hot Springs started as an exploratory drill hole dug by the Stauffer Chemical Company for sodium prospecting in 1967, according to an abandoned well report by the U.S. Geological Survey. After a driller punctured the aquifer at a depth of 350 feet, the Stauffer Chemical Company attempted to plug the leaking borehole, but steady water pressure kept eroding each successive well seal. A year later the cavity was filled with over 10,000 cubic yards of gravel, but the flow was never completely contained.

In the years that followed, the accidental manmade spring lowered groundwater levels and reduced discharge in Thom Spring, two miles south of the borehole in Tecopa Hills. Recently, Thom Spring’s flow has decreased to the point where surface water has been nonexistent for more than a year, Zdon said.

In February, the first atmospheric river of the season delivered rain to Amargosa Valley for several days. Clouds heavy with precipitation sat on top of the surrounding mountains like a fog. Farther south, the Spring Mountains outside Las Vegas received a deluge of rain and snow, leaving behind above-average snowpack. It’s good news for Ash Meadows’ springs, which get 60 percent of their recharge from the Spring Mountains.

“We need that rain. We need that water. And that’s what a lot of this is about,” Nye County Commissioner Bruce Jabbour says.

Wearing a letterman jacket emblazoned with the MGM film studio logo — the one with Leo the lion roaring through a golden halo — Jabbour says residents in the Amargosa Valley cannot afford to let Rover Critical Minerals make the same mistake Stauffer Chemical Company did decades ago.

“We don’t want to take that risk,” Jabbour says. “Without the water, you know what will happen? People move away and it becomes a ghost town. I don’t want any more ghost towns in my county.”

The opaque nature of the mining process frustrates Jabbour. The first time he heard about Rover’s plan to drill dozens of exploratory boreholes in his district was in June, when the Amargosa Conservancy told him about the project’s initial approval. He wasn’t the only one hearing about Rover Critical Minerals for the first time. For exploratory projects on fewer than five acres of public land, federal law doesn’t require developers to submit plans of operation, complete environmental analysis, or solicit public comment.

By the time Jabbour and others were aware of it, Rover’s work on the exploratory project was set to begin within weeks or even days, according to a schedule Culter outlined while announcing financing for the project.

Attorneys for the Amargosa Conservancy and the Center for Biological Diversity quickly filed their lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior and BLM to halt the project. In response, federal land managers agreed to provide the conservation groups public notice for all new exploration or mining projects near the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge for the next 12 months, regardless of size.

After Rover Critical Minerals submitted a new plan in December 2023, the Nye County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution in January opposing mining activities near the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.

“We have another 18,000 square miles of land that they can go and drill and find whatever resources they’re looking for, but not here,” Jabbour says.

Currently, there are several dozen mining claims surrounding Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Rover Critical Minerals is the first company to attempt to develop its claims in the Amargosa Desert, but conservationists warn it won’t be the last.

Not every mining claim gets developed. In fact, geologists estimate that fewer than one in every 100 sites surveyed for mining ever becomes an actual mine. But Rover, which has discovered high-grade lithium surface samples at its 6,000-acre project site, will continue to push ahead.

Remnants of a long mining history are visible almost everywhere in Nevada: weathered piles of crushed rock, rusting mine shafts, dilapidated buildings marking once-thriving camps. Towns built almost overnight, only to be abandoned just as quickly once resources are exhausted. Generations of Nevadans have witnessed the boom and bust of mining. Residents of Amargosa Valley don’t want to see the same pattern repeated in their aquifer, says Mandi Campbell, the historic preservation officer for the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe.

Campbell lives in the Timbisha Indian Village near Furnace Creek of Death Valley National Park. Several tribal citizens in the village live in highly altered adobe homes that are nearly a century old. Elders care for a native mesquite grove growing near the village. Further out, willows, shrubs, and rabbitbrush dot their Death Valley homelands. The tribe is one of a handful of tribes to retain territory within the National Park system. Campbell and other tribal citizens have sustained their way of life in the village, despite its extreme location, because of the underground aquifers that feed the Amargosa River.

“That is the water supply for us here in this valley. The aquifer comes here. There’s no room for a mistake with this lithium mine going in,” Campbell says.

When the General Mining Law passed in 1872, Native Americans were not recognized as U.S. citizens yet. That would happen more than 50 years later — one of the many reasons tribes had no say in how land and minerals were parceled out under the law. While federal laws have been established since then to preserve historic and archaeological sites in the U.S., none of them can prevent or overwrite a valid claim on public land. A tribe telling the federal government that a mine would destroy a spiritually and culturally significant site carries little weight under federal law, says Will Falk, a Nevada attorney who’s represented several tribes in lawsuits across the state.

Before Nevada became another outpost of U.S. expansion, the Timbisha Shoshone planned their lives around the bubbling springs in what’s now a national wildlife refuge. In the spring, the oasis was a place of ceremony, healing, and marriage for migrating Shoshone and Paiute people in the valley. In the summer, the Timbisha Shoshone migrated to the mountainous elevations to find cooler weather, piñon nuts, mesquite beans, roots, and berries. The aquifer and its springs sustain the tribe, in the past and now.

“The way it sounds, Rover Minerals really doesn’t care,” Campbell says. “They have to have respect for all of us and understand why we’re fighting this.”

In February, Timbisha Shoshone drafted a letter calling on federal land managers to ban all new mining claims on thousands of acres of land surrounding the wildlife refuge by establishing a mineral withdrawal.

Under federal law, the Department of the Interior has the authority to withdraw lands from mineral extraction for up to 20 years by approving an application for mineral withdrawal submitted by the managing agency. Mineral withdrawals can also be permanently secured through legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president. Such a maneuver in the Amargosa Valley would not dissolve previous claims, including Rover Critical Minerals’, but it would greatly reduce mining companies’ interest in developing the area, Campbell says.

“Can you imagine a mine?” she asks. “They always say that they’re not going to use that much water. But why did they buy all the water rights up from everywhere? Where are they going to get the water? Obviously, it’s going to be from the aquifer. Where else are they going to get it?”

In February 2023, about 120 people packed into a midsized ballroom at Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa in Las Vegas. There were more people than available chairs, leaving many to lean against the cream-colored walls. One attendee standing in a corner wore a detailed lizard mask and held a sign making it clear he disapproved of the BLM’s plan to open thousands of acres of Nevada’s public land to solar development, mostly in rural Esmeralda, Mineral, and Nye Counties.

Carolyn Allen, chair of the Amargosa Valley Town Board, drove more than an hour to attend the open house. She noted that not a single Nye County commissioner was present. Large colorful maps displayed in the back highlighted the demand for solar development on the land surrounding Allen’s home.

“Do they know anybody who lives here?” she asked. “When you give me a map of my town with 15 solar projects overlapping each other, do you know that’s the bank? Do you know that’s the post office? That this is the school, and this is the park that you’re going to wrap with solar panels and battery storage?”

Before learning about Rover Critical Minerals’ exploration project last summer, Allen had no idea Canada-based Century Lithium had been operating an extraction facility in the Amargosa Valley for the past year. The company is developing its Clayton Valley Lithium Project in west-central Nevada, hoping to produce lithium domestically for the growing electric vehicle and battery storage market.

“We started sleuthing. You know, thank God for the internet. If this had been 30 years ago, we would have never found anything,” Allen said. “It’s being processed in our backyard, and we didn’t even know about it.”

These days, Allen is an ardent student of the General Mining Law, and she was shocked to find it hasn’t been updated in more than a century. She understands that under the century-old mining law, the BLM is obligated to let companies develop their claims, but it doesn’t soften the blow. While describing lithium and solar developers’ growing interest in Amargosa Valley, Allen uses the language of war. The area is “under siege from all sides,” she says. It’s “ground zero.”

“We know it’s coming, there’s no way to stop it,” she continues. “It just sometimes feels like they’re trying to destroy what’s left of the towns with no regard to us.”

Her fear isn’t without reason. The BLM auctioned off thousands of acres in Nevada’s Amargosa Desert for solar development in July, resulting in the highest-yielding onshore renewable energy auction in the agency’s history. Federal land managers identified the Amargosa Desert as one of 17 nationwide solar energy zones, wherein solar energy projects are encouraged.

But solar needs battery storage — which requires lithium. The Biden administration has also pledged to make half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. electric by 2030. The decarbonized, electrified future envisioned by the Biden administration, state governments, automakers, utility companies, and corporate sustainability managers depends to a huge degree on minerals and metals. And they need these materials fast.

The problem is, not enough of them are mined in the U.S. or other friendly countries to meet the projected demands of a decarbonizing nation. According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Minerals Information Center, the U.S. imports nearly 80 percent of its critical minerals demand from foreign suppliers.

A flurry of new federal legislation — including 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — has poured $6 billion into companies working on mining and processing critical minerals on U.S. soil, most on public land. The federal government controls and manages almost 98 percent of the land in Nye County, making it an attractive prospect for developers hoping to cash in on the clean energy transition.

Starting in the summer of 2023, Allen and Amargosa Town Clerk Cottingim knocked on doors, organized meetings, mailed fliers and did countless hours of research looking for solutions to halt Rover’s exploratory lithium project near Ash Meadows National Refuge. Amargosa Valley residents, tribes, Nye County governing boards, and the Amargosa Conservancy settled on one solution: a 20-year federal mineral withdrawal. The same process was used to withdraw nearly 23,000 acres in Nye County’s Railroad Valley last year, when NASA asked the BLM to step in and protect the area from lithium exploration and mining. It’s an imperfect solution — incomplete and temporary — Allen says, but it’s their best bet.

“It gives us, God willing if we can win this fight, 20 years to change the laws,” Allen says.

“We’ve been left alone for so long, and now they’re coming after us because we didn’t speak up, we didn’t fight, we had no opinion. Now, they can’t shut us up,” Allen says, her hand resting on a pile of information fliers she’s mailed to nearly every resident in the valley.

A 20-year mineral withdrawal is a hard sell to Nye County, historically a hotbed of opposition to government land management. Mining is also one of the county’s biggest employers. Throughout history, the state’s economy has largely depended on its mine — first exploiting veins of gold and silver, and, more recently, extracting deposits of molybdenum and barite for modern industry. The Comstock Lode in Virginia City bankrolled Abraham Lincoln’s Union Army during the Civil War and fueled the growth of Nevada and San Francisco.

“Nevada is mining. We want mining. We don’t want them to go away,” Allen says. “But not at the cost of the destruction of Ash Meadows and our water.”

Rover Critical Minerals was a wake-up call for residents who treasure the unique wetlands of the refuge. Allen remembers watching Westerns as a kid and thinking that the warm, expansive golden brown backdrops and layers of red sandstone were just movie sets designed to mystify the West. It pulled her to move to the Amargosa Valley more than a decade ago.  “The desert will grab you,” Allen says.

“I’m upset, because we’ve always just looked at the Amargosa River,” she adds, “and we never looked 30,000 feet outward, at what’s around it. If we paid more attention, we could have done something before now.”