A federal judge in Arizona has paused exploration for lithium — a key electric vehicle battery ingredient — after a tribe there warned that drilling could damage a nearby sacred spring, rejecting the Biden administration’s argument that the activity is needed to fuel a “green energy transition.”
U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix this week granted a temporary restraining order, halting a plan the Bureau of Land Management approved for a company to drill more than 100 exploratory wells in Arizona near the Cofer Hot Spring, also known as Ha’Kamwe’. The Hualapai Tribe considers the naturally occurring hot spring in the Big Sandy River Basin to be a sacred healing place.
Humetewa’s decision was a response to a lawsuit the Hualapai Tribe filed earlier this month, warning that the project near Wikieup poses a direct threat to the hot spring.
The case is yet another example of the legal and regulatory challenges that companies face in moving to explore for and dig up lithium and other minerals needed to fuel a national and global shift to electric vehicles — often in parched or vulnerable landscapes near or on Indigenous lands.
