NASA OPPOSES LITHIUM MINING AT TABLETOP FLAT NEVADA DESERT SITE USED TO CALIBRATE SATELLITES

Environmentalists, tribal leaders and others have fought for years against lithium mining ventures in Nevada. Yet opposition to mining one particular desert tract for the silvery white metal used in electric car batteries is coming from unusual quarters: space.

An ancient Nevada lakebed beckons as a vast source of the coveted element needed to produce cleaner electric energy and fight global warming. But NASA says the same site — flat as a tabletop and undisturbed like none other in the Western Hemisphere — is indispensable for calibrating the razor-sharp measurements of hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead.

At the space agency’s request, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to withdraw 36 square miles (92 square kilometers) of the eastern Nevada terrain from its inventory of federal lands open to potential mineral exploration and mining.

NASA says the long, flat piece of land above the untapped lithium deposit in Nevada’s Railroad Valley has been used for nearly three decades to get measurements just right to keep satellites and their applications functioning properly.

“No other location in the United States is suitable for this purpose,” the Bureau of Land Management concluded in April after receiving NASA’s input on the tract 250 miles (400 kilometers) northeast of Las Vegas.

The bureau has spent nearly three years fighting mining challenges of all sorts from conservationists, tribes, ranchers and others who want to overturn approval of a huge lithium mine in the works in northwest Nevada near the Oregon line.

In December, the bureau initiated a review of plans for another lithium mine conservationists oppose near the California line where an endangered desert wildflower grows, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) southeast of Reno.