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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2022
Company eyes Oregon for lithium
By BRADLEY W. PARKS
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Sammy Castonguay broke
a chunk of rock off a small
outcropping on the north-
east rim of the McDermitt
Caldera on the Oregon and
Nevada border and pinned it
to the ground with his boot.
He raised his hammer and,
with a gentle swing, smashed
the rock into smaller pieces.
Castonguay was collect-
ing samples for his geol-
ogy students at Treasure Val-
ley Community College in
Ontario on a sunny Friday
last month . He said teaching
about this ancient supervol-
cano is a lot easier when he
can hand a piece of the soft,
white rock to his pupils.
“Last time I was out here, I
think I only gathered like fi ve
samples,” Castonguay said,
admiring a specimen striped
with burnt orange. “And
those walked away really
quickly.”
Others are looking for
their piece of the McDermitt
Caldera too.
The caldera has some of
the highest concentrations of
lithium in the United States.
Lithium is the lightest metal
on E arth and highly reactive,
making it an ideal ingredi-
ent in batteries to power cell-
phones, laptops and electric
vehicles.
The British Colum-
bia-based company Lithium
Americas is moving forward
with a mining project on the
southern tip of the caldera in
Nevada that has drawn law-
suits and protests.
Meanwhile,
Austra-
lia-based Jindalee Resources
is exploring a lithium deposit
on the Oregon side of the cal-
dera that it says could be the
biggest in the country. No
mine has been proposed in
Oregon, but after scoping the
Bureau of Land Management
site, Jindalee says the deposit
could eventually support one.
The “lithium rush” is com-
ing to the Beaver State as the
U.S. and global powers seek
more of the metal to power
electric vehicles and store
renewable energy from wind
and solar. Digging up Ore-
gon’s lithium would mean
sacrifi cing this chunk of the
sagebrush sea to provide the
nation with a key ingredient
to wean itself off fossil fuels.
Castonguay said it’s
important to know the history
of the McDermitt Caldera
and how it formed before
deciding whether to alter this
landscape forever.
“This
feature
we’re
talking about and waving our
arms around is 16 million
Bradley W. Parks/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Disaster Peak, left, punctuates the northwest rim of the McDermitt Caldera in southeast Oregon. The historic lakebed in the foreground contains some of the
highest concentrations of lithium in the United States.
years old,” Castonguay said,
gesturing to the vast caldera
before him. “And we’re about
to make decisions in fi ve, 10
years about this thing. That’s
a blink of an eye in geologic
time.”
An eruption
to dwarf St. Helens
Castonguay scribbled fi eld
notes as the sun melted the
thin layer of snow cover and
turned the ground to soup. He
said this was not the place to
be 16.4 million years ago.
“We would not want to be
standing here,” Castonguay
said. “This is the site of an
immense eruption.”
The same hotspot that
causes volcanic activity at
Yellowstone National Park
today was heating up McDer-
mitt at the time. Contrary
to other volcanoes, which
are created by colliding or
diverging tectonic plates,
hotspots are relatively sta-
tionary and are the result of
hot material near the center of
the earth rising to the surface.
The hotspot warmed a
magma chamber, creating
pressure that caused the vol-
cano to erupt.
Chris Henry, a research
geologist emeritus at the Uni-
versity of Nevada, Reno and
the Nevada Bureau of Mines
and Geology who helped
make the fi rst geologic map
of the McDermitt Caldera,
said the eruption was unlike
anything anyone alive today
has ever seen.
“What happens in this is
the magma’s bubbling up,
and it shoots up in a big col-
umn,” Henry said. “That col-
umn collapses, and it fl ows
out as very hot, fairly dense,
gas-rich, magma particle-rich
fl ows. They’re very hot. They
cook everything.”
The McDermitt eruption
ejected about 1,000 times
more magma than Mount St.
Helens in 1980, blazing a trail
of destruction.
“Any wildlife, any vege-
tation in the immediate area
would really be destroyed,
sadly,” Henry said. “Mount
St. Helens killed a bunch of
people, knocked down a lot
of forest; this was a much
bigger eruption, and it would
have done even more so.”
Lost lake
The hollowed-out magma
chamber was no longer
strong enough to hold the
land above, so the center of
the volcano collapsed into the
void, creating a lakebed sur-
rounded by mountains and
buttes.
Today, the McDermitt Cal-
dera blends into the tan satel-
lite view of the arid Ameri-
can West. But up until at least
15.7 million years ago, Henry
said, the caldera was fi lled
with water like Crater Lake
and Newberry Crater to the
west.
Over time, the lake that
fi lled McDermitt Caldera
slowly eroded the rhyolite
rim that held the water in
place. That erosive process is
what moved a lot of the lith-
ium stored in the rim of the
caldera into the lakebed clays,
but Henry said an additional
source of lithium is likely.
The unique geology of
the McDermitt Caldera, cou-
pled with a fortuitous draw-
ing of state lines, has posi-
tioned Oregon and its poorest
county, Malheur, to play a
major role in the global tran-
sition to renewable energy.
“I think that Oregonians
need to know about this spe-
cifi c geology and this specifi c
mineral that’s here in lith-
ium because it plays such an
immense role in the future of
climate change,” Castonguay
said.
Smaller eruptions con-
tinued in and around the
McDermitt Caldera for a few
hundred thousand years after
the initial blast 16.4 million
years ago. Volcanic activity
died down at McDermitt as
the North American tectonic
plate slowly moved over the
hotspot (imagine a sheet of
cookies baking over a Bun-
sen burner), leaving a trail of
volcanic centers from here to
Yellowstone.
None of them seems to
have the type of lithium
deposits found at McDermitt.
Scientists aren’t sure why.
“And that’s real curious
because it would seem like the
same geology and the same
geologic processes occurred
in these other places, so why
don’t they have lithium?”
Henry said. “And that’s a real
big question and one we’re
puzzling over.”
Oregon’s opportunity
The American appetite
for lithium is more voracious
than it’s ever been.
Most people have a lithi-
um-ion battery in their pocket
and many of them replace it
every few years. Carmak-
ers like General Motors have
made promises to go at least
partially if not fully electric
within the next few years.
“These are things that
directly aff ect people’s lives,”
Henry said. “If we want to
have electric vehicles and a
lot of other electrical appli-
cations, we’re gonna need
to have the materials that go
into those batteries, and cur-
rently lithium is the really big
thing.”
While U.S. lithium con-
sumption has spiked, produc-
tion hasn’t.
The only lithium produced
in the United States last year
came from a brine extraction
facility near Silver Peak,
Nevada — a project that’s
been online since the 1960s.
The U.S. imports the majority
of its lithium products from
Argentina, Chile, China and
Russia.
The Trump administra-
tion labeled lithium a critical
mineral in 2018, expediting
the approval process for lith-
ium mining and exploration.
The Biden administration has
since announced its intent
to source, refi ne and recycle
more lithium domestically.
Some are excited by the
prospect of lithium extraction
in Oregon. Greg Smith,
who directs Malheur Coun-
ty’s economic development
agency, says a mine could
provide well-paying jobs
and spur growth in other sec-
tors like housing and hospi-
tality. Malheur County has
the highest poverty rate in
the state, according to a 2020
report from the Oregon Cen-
ter for Public Policy.
Smith said he’s also
aware of the controversy cre-
ated by a proposed lithium
mine on the Nevada side of
the McDermitt Caldera at
Thacker Pass. That project
has attracted multiple law-
suits, including from the
nearby Fort McDermitt Pai-
ute and Shoshone and Burns
Paiute tribes.
“For us to be able to cre-
ate this economic opportu-
nity, we’re gonna have to do
it the Oregon way,” Smith
said. “And we’re gonna have
to make sure that it’s done
in a manner that benefi ts all
parties.”
Mineral exploration and
geologic study have proven
the state has a lot of lithium.
It’s unclear whether Orego-
nians will support digging it
all up.
You can still see the rem-
nants from the last time Ore-
gon mined the McDermitt
Caldera. Castonguay pointed
to cinnamon- and ginger-col-
ored piles of waste left over
from uranium and mercury
extraction years ago.
“It is a gift to have the con-
versation about this metal,”
Castonguay said of lithium.
“And to make short-lived,
quick decisions, we are so far
beyond that. We’ve paid that
price before.”
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