How Washington is bending over backward for mining companies in Nevada at the expense of environmental rules
On a cold, windy day in late October, in one of the most remote and least populated regions of the state, a half-dozen workers prepared to drill another test hole in the arid volcanic rock. They were
The Bureau of Land Management—BLM—approves the mining permits on all federal land. Since its creation in 1946, the agency has had a dual mission to balance the demands of industry and environmental protection. In this part of Nevada, that job falls to the BLM’s Battle Mountain district office, located more than 250 miles away. But according to a sweeping whistleblower complaint filed on October 4
“This ... is more than disagreement with the decisions of his superiors,” the attorney for Dan Patterson, the BLM whistleblower, wrote in the complaint, “but stems from a sincere belief that the laws of the United States are being disregarded for the professional expediency of his superiors and the benefit of private parties, and that a culture of lawlessness has been engendered.”
BLM officials in western Nevada have enabled Ioneer to reap those benefits by the favorable way they have chosen to interpret and enforce existing environmental laws. Mining companies can avoid long and costly environmental reviews during their exploration phase as long as they disturb no more than five acres. But in this case Ioneer filed two separate notices, both just under the five-acre limit, about a mile and a half apart but within the boundaries of the same project.
mine is ultimately approved, it will drive the buckwheat to extinction. The petition to have a plant listed as an endangered species can take years, even decades. Meanwhile, Ioneer says it hopes to begin production by 2023, and hopes to complete its mandatory environmental review in one year, a timetable that is unusually fast for a project that has raised questions about the survival of an endemic species.
Patterson grew up in Michigan and studied resource management at Michigan State University before moving to Arizona in 1994. He has lived out west ever since. In 2008, Patterson was elected to the Arizona Legislature, where he served on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee but was forced to resign three years later after a House ethics investigation found he “verbally abuses, assaults, and harasses his colleagues.
He hadn’t. Donnelly reached out to the small handful of botanists and other officials familiar with the Rhyolite Ridge site. Scrappy and outspoken, Donnelly and the Center for Biological Diversity have challenged the Trump administration’s push to expand oil and gas development and mining in the state. Recently, the center scored a major victory against the administration’s attempt to overhaul a sage grouse conservation plan that had been enacted during the Obama administration.
Around that same time, Patterson flagged a second reason for concern about the project. He told his supervisor In June 2019, about a year after he first learned of the buckwheat, Donnelly drove over 200 miles to the Tonopah field office to review Ioneer’s exploration notices. At the office he had an hourlong conversation with Earl Numinen, the assistant field manager, and reviewed some of the case files for the lithium mine. Donnelly says Numinen was “fairly transparent” and that he was able to access some of the records related to the project.
Patterson thinks the suspension had more to do with the Center for Biological Diversity records requests than the argument. While he was still in Alaska, Patterson had a conversation with the district manager who pressed him on whether he knew anything about the requests. Patterson said he wasn’t aware of the FOIA, though Donnelly had informed him of the request months before in a text message. Later, in a meeting with Wickham, Patterson said he was asked about his previous work for the center.
Through a BLM spokesperson, Wickham said he followed me out of curiosity after seeing one of his employees riding with a reporter. The previous afternoon I had stopped by the Tonopah field office to review case files and, though Wickham wasn’t there, he instructed his staff to tell me that I needed permission from the state office to access records, which is not standard practice. After about an hour, I was told to leave the office.
Two spartan buildings constructed on the public lands referred to as the Five Jokers mining site. | Daniel R. Patterson has engaged in construction on more than 1,000 acres of public land outside the approved boundary of their project, and “removed more than 10,000 tons of mineral materials without a modified Plan of Operations,” according to the complaint.
According to the inspector general, in an email to Patterson’s attorney, the office has reviewed the complaint and is in the “process of evaluating each of the allegations and determining a path forward.”
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