In rural Utah, concern over efforts to use Colorado River water to extract lithium
A company’s plan in southeast Utah to extract lithium is adding to an anxiety familiar in this part of the arid American West: how the project could affect water from the Colorado River
GREEN RIVER, Utah — A plan to extract lithium — the lustrous, white metal used in electric vehicle batteries — in southeast Utah is adding to an anxiety familiar in the arid American West: how the project could affect water from the Colorado River.
An Australian company and its U.S. subsidiaries are analyzing the saline waters in a geologic formation shared by Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, an area called the Paradox Basin. The area's groundwater is rich in lithium salts and other minerals from when it was a marine basin millions of years ago that repeatedly flooded and drained.
The company has also acquired rights to freshwater from the Green River nearby, leading to questions about how groundwater and river water are connected, and how its plans to produce lithium could affect the environment. The Green River is a tributary of the Colorado River, the over-tapped powerhouse of the West upon which 40 million people rely.
“We need to have a renewable energy transition, but maybe we shouldn’t be looking for these kinds of quick-fix energy solutions on a drought-stricken river,” said Lauren Wood, a third-generation resident of Green River, Utah, a town of 900 near a site Anson Resources is considering.
Many minerals are mined in open pits. But here lithium would be separated from saline water using chemicals, which could be faster and less disruptive to the environment than the traditional drilling, blasting and excavating of mining.
The project is one small piece in a global ramp-up of lithium production to make batteries for
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