David Boutt Talks to 'Floodlight News' on Risks Tied to Lithium Mining

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Lithium evaporation mining in Clayton Valley, Nevada

Mining companies, aided by the U.S. government, are ramping up lithium extraction efforts to meet growing demand for this essential element in renewable energy technologies—particularly in electric vehicle batteries and large-scale grid storage. 

However, lithium mining carries significant environmental risks, including potential harm to biodiversity and depletion or contamination of groundwater, depending on the extraction methods employed. Floodlight News—"an independent, nonpartisan newsroom that investigates the corporations and political interests stalling climate action"—reached out to David Boutt, a professor in the Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences and head of the Hydrogeology Group at UMass Amherst, to understand the difficulties in assessing the risks tied to lithium mining. 

"The exact risks of each new lithium mine are tricky to measure. The three different types of mines [brine evaporation, hard rock, and clay] can have different effects, depending on variables including location, says David Boutt, a hydrogeology researcher and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Companies are often reluctant to share data that would help scientists evaluate impacts, he says.

'It’s hard to establish a number, like, this one has like a 30% less environmental impact than the others,' Boutt says. 'We don’t see these numbers, because a lot of the impacts are local and hard to quantify.'"

— Floodlight News

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