Estimates are there’s enough Lithium in northern New England from VT thru NH into Maine for the US battery needs for decades if not centuries. The problem with it is it has to be mined and that sometimes is not very environmentally friendly. VT, NH and ME rely heavily on tourism which could be greatly affected by the mining of Lithium. Lithium in Eastern States Could Replace Imports for a Century or More | U.S. Geological Survey
Great for the battery industry. I thought we would have moved on from Lithiun by now.
I do not think mining much of the Lithium is feasible…
Approximately just over 80% of the land in New Hampshire is privately owned. Private ownership includes not just the land that peoples home are located on but also family forests, timberland companies, and institutional owners, with over 70% of the state’s total land area categorized as private. Roughly 30% of the state is considered public or permanently protected land.
And as for Vermont, Approximately 85% of the land in Vermont is privately owned, making it one of the states with the highest percentages of private land ownership in the US. Over 80% of the state’s 4.6 million acres of forestland is held by private individuals or entities.
And even more so than Vermont, approximately 95% of Maine’s land is privately owned, making it the second highest percentages of private land ownership in the United States (Texas has the highest percentage…). This includes extensive forestland, much of which is open to the public for recreation, with Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife noting that private landowners hold approximately 95% of the state’s forest land.
I can hear it now, “NOT IN MY BACKYARD!!!” (All Caps because they will be shouting it…)
How much money will it take to change the land owner’s minds and get them to sell? Also, is it strip mining or underground mining? The lithium is in hard rock deposits, and I suspect that means underground mining. If it’s underground, much less land is needed.
There appears to be two main methods to get at the Lithium, open pit, and brine extraction… Open pit is pretty much known about, but to a less extent is brine extraction where the lithium is suspended in ground water… the ground water is pumped out and then put into evaporations ponds, really large pond when the brine slowly evaporates leaving the lithium and other minerals behind… Either case, the forest are gone…
I imagine that if you offer the folks enough, most will sell, but you will need all to sell…
With that being said, Virginia holds the largest unmined uranium deposit in the United States, located at Coles Hill in Pittsylvania County, which contains over 119 million pounds of uranium ore. A long-standing 1982 state ban on uranium mining currently prevents its extraction, driven by environmental and public health concerns regarding potential water contamination. The value of the these deposits exceed $12 Billion and the many owners have sued to be able to mine these deposits and all attempts have failed in court… Some things are worth more… Like water quality…
I take it you’ve never heard of the term eminent domain. And anyone sitting on possible large deposits will probably be offered MILLIONS for their property.
+1
My home is adjacent to two state parks, and one of those parks exists only because of Eminent Domain. Back in the '60s, the state planned to build a very large reservoir, and they began Eminent Domain proceedings against the farmers who owned the land in question.
It took several years, but they eventually evicted all of the farmers from their land. However, because two other new reservoirs were considered to be sufficient, the one in my town was never built, and it eventually became state park land.
For the farmers, it was a tragedy because most of them were continuing the tradition of their Dutch ancestors who had begun farming there in the late 1600s, or English ancestors who had been farming there since the 1700s. The price that they were paid for their land was a pittance compared to what it would be worth today, with our sharply-inflated real estate prices.
There is a third method, currently being implemented in south Arkansas, where lithium-containing brine is produced from deep (8,000’ or more) formations through wells (which can be a mile or more apart from each other), processed at a central facility, and then re-injected back into the same formation, so the surface impacts are much less. I’m currently working on two of those projects, one of which is nearing kickoff.
The big watershed project of the 60’s took THOUSANDS of acres via Eminent Domain to build the series of dams to control flooding of the Merrimack River. Some whole towns were moved.
If they are offered millions for their property in a private sale, they can refuse. If eminent domain is for public benefit, they have no right to refuse. The price can be argued, but generally not the seizure.
There have been cases where eminent domain is used to compel a sale to a corporation (public or private)…like a mining company… rather than the state. This is not for a park, this is a forced sale at a non-negotiable price to a 3rd entity.
If this is for public use, the law upholds eminent domain. If this is solely for PRIVATE gain, that is illegal and can be challenged. It is a legal stretch to argue a for-profit lithium mine is for public benefit.
Yep, search for ‘mining eminent domain’ and you’ll find lots of discussions about how it gets applied TO mining projects, not BY mining projects. I’d be surprised if eminent domain could be used successfully by a mining company, especially in New England.
Oh, I know about Eminent Domain, I have been to the Tennessee Valley Authority area and some of the decedents are still fighting for just compensation… I would be interested to know of one displaced family that actually received “Just Compensation…” in the “millions of dollars…”
Just Compensation is in the eye if the spender, seldom is the seller happy with the "Just Compensation’ that would never buy property equivalent to what they were forced to leave…
Speaking of Eminent Domain, a surveying error that followed the seizure of some private property in NYC for road construction has been forever memorialized by the family that lost (most) of its property to the Eminent Domain process. It’s sometimes referred to as the smallest parcel of land in NYC.
I forgot about Mineral Rights. Just because you own the land does NOT mean you own the minerals in the land and they can be mined with or without your permission. Not everyone owns the mineral rights to their property in NH (or most states for that matter). And if you don’t a corporation can buy those rights from the state and mine your property without your permission. Really hasn’t been an issue in NH til now since most precious metals like gold have been mined out centuries ago.
When I lived in Texas and Arizona, our homes did not come with the mineral rights… They had been sold off during the depression… That meant we could not drill a well or do any other type of extraction… We also had special notifications that the mineral rights owners had the right to enter our property at any time… And that we might have restrictions on the buildings (sheds, barns, out-buildings, etc…) that we could put on our land… It did say that if they damaged any surface “items” building, crops, trees, etc… they had to compensate us… While we were there, we were aware of numerous cases in the courts as to the definition of “Minerals” and did it include water and water rights… I remember one case where there were wells on the property before the rights were sold and the wells and their contents (water) were not included in the sale, but the land owner could not drill new wells and one of the arguments was could the land owner drill those same well deeper…
The decision from this case sparked controversy with 47 states strengthening their eminent domain lawsand 12 states amending their state constitutions to stop eminent domain from benefiting private parties.
Specifically, NH’s response:
New Hampshire enacted a 2006 constitutional amendment approved by the voters that forbids the government from using eminent domain for private development following the Kelo v. New London case.
Maine’s response is similar:
Enacted in 2006, Legislative Document 1870 declares it is not a public use to condemn property “for the purposes of private retail, office, commercial, industrial or residential development.” The law also specifies that eminent domain may not be used “primarily for the enhancement of tax revenue” or to “transfer to a person, nongovernmental entity, public-private partnership, corporation or other business entity.”
Vermont’s response was similar:
SB 246 signed into law in April 2006, prohibits the use of eminent domain where “the taking is primarily for purposes of economic development” or confers a private benefit on a particular private party.
In summary, Kelo is a controversial decision by the Supremes that encouraged a majority of states to strengthen their eminent domain laws to prevent what Kelo decided.
