Per rules, not editorializing the title. This news is about a month old, but curious on thoughts?

The following minerals were found at Pennington Mountain, which is just south of Eagle Lake in Aroostook county. This is in addition to the estimated $1.5B lithium deposit near Sunday River. It looks like Maine could have a future in extracting very valuable metals for important technologies. Current law prevents mining, however.

​

• niobium: used to manufacture gas turbines, jet engines and MRI scanners
• zirconium: corrosive and heat-resistant metal used in superconducting magnets
• dysprosium: boosts durability, cuts weight of magnets for electric vehicle and wind turbine motors
• erbium: amplifies the signal of fiber-optic cables carrying data over long distances
• gallium: used in semiconductors for smartphones, light-emitting diodes and solar cells
• hafnium: used in the control rods of nuclear reactors and as an electrical insulator in microchips
• lanthanum: used in hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen storage and electric vehicle batteries
• neodymium: magnets in electric vehicles, wind turbines and computer hard drives
• praseodymium: create durable high-power magnets for electric vehicles and wind turbines
• yttrium: used in catalysts, ceramics, electronics, lasers, metallurgy and phosphors

Please, please, please don’t start strip mining Maine… :.(

I used to work environmental at a large mine out west and then for a global mining company. We don't want this here.

They may be worth "billions" but not to you or anyone working at them. When it comes to clean up, though, we'll be paying for it to the tune of millions, if not billions, by the time the corporate overlords have abandoned them. EDIT: That is part of the business plan.

The damage won't just be visual. Poison water and dead wildlife come with the devastation.

Don't worry Maine will not allow any new industry into the state. It's all part of the "any and all change is evil" culture here.

PFAS contamination has nothing on this. we’ll have heavy metal poisoning the rivers and soil.

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"No, not here"

>!posted from my iPhone!<

I’m all for change that is good and makes sense (like better public transit, the proposed 70 mile bike loop in southern Maine, raising pay for healthcare workers which we are in desperate need of, more housing), but I’m not for environmental disasters. Mining has huge consequences for the environment and community that lives near the mine.

This is not a deposit it's an occurrence. It's the Appalachian orogen so not exactly novel to have mineral occurrences.

> Mining has huge consequences for the environment and community that lives near the mine.

Then stop using electronics, period.

It's fine as long as it's someone else's backyard, eh?

> It's fine as long as it's someone else's backyard, eh?

Yes. Where mining is concerned, yes. Maine's great outdoors is its best moneymaking asset. Yeah, tourists suck but poison water sucks more.

And poison air. I actually worked on an air quality project near a mining site. The consequences are awful. These communities become ghost towns once the site is “dried up” and jobs are no longer viable, except for the few very poor who cannot leave the area who continue to get poisoned from the site. The number of jobs can also be overblown because a lot of mining has become automated as well.

The answer should be less consumption, and more recycling/fixing/reuse of materials. It’s really easy to make bold claims on Reddit, but a mine in your backyard is not generally something most people would want. The people who profit of it are not going to live in the community that was destroyed either.

Rule 4, no editorialized titles.

Also, a "mineral deposit" is a mineral occurrence that may have economic potential

I'll say no not here then, from my 3 year old UMIDIGI Bison that I've kept using despite cracking the tough phone's screen two years ago

Made from locally-sourced, totally environmentally friendly materials, I'm sure.

There is not a thing in your house with a microchip in it that doesn't have raw materials sourced from one of these mines. You thinking you're being cute about the brand doesn't change the calculus that you're still NIMBYing your problems onto other human beings.

My point is more that I'm holding onto shit for a long time, I actively minimize my e-waste, including repairing my own electronics whenever is possible. The phone I had before this one I kept for 5 years and did a battery replacement on myself, I use computer monitors that were originally bound for an e-waste center. My TV was a broken find that I managed to replace the power supply in and now it works a charm.

Because yes tech stuff eats up rare earth metals like nobody's business, and it's hard to go without them in this day and age, but my reducing my e-waste I'm also reducing my demand for more, doing a small part to make running environmentally and often ethically dangerous mines in less demand also.

I'm all for putting renewable energy production and other infrastructure projects around if it benefits the local population, but Mainers would not see the wealth of the mines and still deal with the inevitable environmental impact of them.

When it comes to mining, NIMBYism is the best option. These minerals are obviously available elsewhere because we're using them in said phones and other devices. So recycle them to make more. Or figure out different materials for the same purpose. There is no reason to fuck up Maine on multiple levels with mining.

All mining in the US operates under the Mining Act of 1872. Despite several efforts to update it, it stands. If you want to live in a state that operates under those conditions, move out west. There are a lot of opportunities for you.

The only reason to mine here is because some assholes from away want to make shitloads of money then declare bankruptcy and leave us with a bazillion dollar clean up. It's part of the business plan. If you don't believe me, look at every spent and then abandoned mine out west. The cost is not worth it using any calculator.

> When it comes to mining, NIMBYism is the best option.

"trust me bro, it's really important to my lifestyle that your water is poisoned."

Cracks me up that you can type all that and think it's a good point.

Did you not read the rest of the post? Give it a go.

Sure.

Me: Where we gonna set up the e-waste recycling?

You: Somewhere else.

that's how the rest of this convo goes, sorry to spoil it.

I didn't call it "e-waste". You did. I said figure out how to recycle it. Nothing about disposing of it, which already is a problem.

Maine isn't the only place that uses phones and microchips. This is a global problem. Why do you think Maine is a good place to aggravate the problem by allowing rich fucks to get richer by destroying our natural resources and then leave us with the clean up?

I'm sure there are some valuable resources closer to like brownish people we can get. Nobody is trying to pay money to visit their dumb forests anyway.

What the fuck are you talking about? You want to turn this into a racist discussion? Go away.

e-waste is the common nomanclature for all of it. Being pedantic is goofy.

You're right this is a global problem. So what are you doing to solve the global problem besides whining that you shouldn't have to shoulder any of the burden of the industry you clearly enjoy the fruits of?

This is not a new conversation, and you have no reasonable rebuttal to it. NIMBYism sucks no matter how many coats of sugar you shellack it with.

So instead these things should only be mined in poor countries that can't afford to contain or prevent environmental damage, frequently by child or slave labor, with little to no oversight?

How are you going to benefit from mining these minerals? Fess up. Full disclosure.

Yes, I'm a mining industry shill. I got 75 cents for making this comment. Good stuff.

I see that we've reached the end of any useful discussion, so y'all can jerk yourselves raw in peace.

No answer to why you're advocating for the mining industry? Then shut the fuck up. You have no idea what it can do to the environment and economy of an area. Sit this one out.

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You're naive if you think this will lesson that and will benefit maine at all.

> You want to turn this into a racist discussion?

Mining and exploitation of natural resources is ABSOLUTELY a racial/class issue.

I'm no NIMBY. But, at the same time, this is not what we want for our state, from a man who's lived in corporation-ravaged areas of other states. Until controls are in place negating the catastrophic consequences of mining, Mainers shouldn't even consider extracting. Lithium for example; recyclable, but more economically viable to simply mow down mountains to extract new, paying fines when forced to do so. That needs to change, or remain illegal in Maine.

Unless you long for Maine to look (and smell) more like the I95 corridor through New Jersey.

And, to make it political (sorry I know people hate that but..) I feel like this will become a political football, with every GOP candidate for Governor looking to invite corporate mining companies to the party. Years of commercials about the benefits and jobs, demonizing everyone who want to 'kill Maine's economy', without telling people how similar mining projects have left uninhabitable wastelands across the world, some of which you can visit right here in the US.

It is but that's not what we're talking about here. That's a completely different discussion.

So, what do you think will happen if they start mining this land in Northern Maine? It will benefit the wealthy who don’t have to live by the mine, who can conduct their business far away from the site, while it poisons the people who cannot move away from it by contamination of the water and air. That’s what happens. This isn’t going into Cape Elizabeth, it would be going into Aroostook county where the median income is $24k a year.

So, I don’t see what the argument is here. It’s another mine that would go into a poorer community and ultimately poison the resources there. You are not standing up for the “little people” by advocating for mining this material. All that’s going to happen is some CEO in another state will add to their wealth while the people in Maine suffer the consequences to their land.

I sure hope the land doesn't get sold to China. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Chinese bought it, opened up a huge mine and sold the products of the mine back to Americans in the form of components for electric vehicles, turbines and various electronics?

This would go into a poorer community. What are you talking about? There are 14k active mines in the US, mostly in poorer communities. Aroostook county is not a wealthy area, and it will poison the air and water in that area while those who don’t live there profit. This isn’t the same as Cape Elizabeth voting down affordable housing. This would actively harm people who cannot afford to leave the area and generate profits for people no where near Northern Maine.

The comments on here are ridiculous.

The poorest areas of the US that have mines have some of the best protected environments and citizens of anywhere in the world with mines.

Or do you think Aroostook is at risk of the fucking Wagner group seizing control of a mine claiming it was because they aren't being paid and removing any protections the workers and people who live around the mine have?

I actually worked on an air quality project in Arizona (which hosts the second largest number of mines in America), and there are places that are inhabitable because they are so poisonous. The mines are no where near the major cities. The vast majority of mining towns become ghost towns once the jobs dry up, leaving behind the poorest of the community to poisoned water and air. EPA clean up of these sites is often slow to non existent due to funding and bureaucracy, and often because these are towns inhabited by people who lack any economic power. Jobs aren’t even a good argument anymore, because a lot of mining jobs have become automated.

Again, if you want an environmental disaster in an already vulnerable and poor area that will benefit rich people who don’t live there, by all means.

So you're saying that we should only have mines in countries too poor to say no? Because that's the end point of this kind of thinking

This would go in a poor area in the US. I don’t know how else to explain that to you. This isn’t going into Cumberland County, it’s going into a rural part of Aroostook county. You are not advocating for anyone here.

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Oh fuck.

>So you're saying that we should only have mines in countries too poor to say no? Because that's the end point of this kind of thinking.

Strawman Logical Fallacy - “A straw man fallacy occurs when someone takes another person’s argument or point, distorts it or exaggerates it in some kind of extreme way, and then attacks the extreme distortion, as if that is really the claim the first person is making.

"American slaves had it sooooooo much better than other slaves. How can they complain!?"

-This guy, comparing micro-shades of grey.

And those communities should be defended from mining.

What doesn't at all make sense is trying to create equality by fucking up all poor communities equally across race.

You're trying to fight the good fight, but you're doing it as ass-backward as you can manage.

You should go join one of the organizations that fight mining in impoverished areas, or groups that are fighting against mining special interests by trying to force them to extract resources using better techniques while holding them responsible for the environmental damage they create.

The reason people are against this is because in the current state the US doesn't penalize corporations for their bad mining practices - it actually heavily rewards them. So nobody wants them.

Do you think people in Aroostook county or people in Burundi will suffer more for having a mine opened around them?

Go fuck yourself. Comparing environmental and worker protects in Aroostook county to places like Burundi where actual slaves are worked to death in mines is nothing at all like that and you should know it.

And setup shop in China, ME lol

Came here to echo what many are already saying. It does not benefit the state to pull this stuff out of the ground, and the figures being thrown about are not particularly impressive. A billion dollars isnt much in the mining game, a junior mining operation at best. For what, to enrich a few execs who live in Miami or China, or a couple who hit a lithium bonanza? This is trifling crap. The damage to Maine (whose main value is pristine wilderness) far outweighs the benefits. Thanks god open pit mining requires state approval.

First of all, for this to even be a fair argument the materials available in Maine and Burundi would have to be exactly the same, which is unlikely.

Second, I am not advocating mining in vulnerable places overseas. There should be less mining, less consumption, and more recycling and reusing of materials rather than ripping up the land in vulnerable communities. Many of mines in the US disproportionately impact Native communities, and poorer communities. It’s not social justice to move the impact from one vulnerable community to another. Where I worked on the air quality project, the air was full of lead and arsenic next to a school. The people being poisoned were children, all of who were low income and and majority Latino. Who profits off this? A few very wealthy people.

What we should be doing is mining less, extending the life of electronics, recycling electronics, and living with less. If you are truly worried about mining overseas, which I kind of doubt you are and assume you are trolling, then advocate for more environmental and human rights protections on a global level as well as more research and methods into recycling of metals. Advocate against corporate greed and over extraction of materials.

I’d hate to see the county get mined. Unless it’s the county & Maine getting rich. Outside investors? No.

some of these elements are used to make electric car batteries..
are you against green energy?

Yes. Everyone here supports child labor and slavery. You got us. Fuckwit.

If you think that rare earth minerals shouldn't be mined in richer countries you are in fact supporting them being mined in poorer countries where abuse is far more wide spread.

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Reclyling and extending the life of existing materials should be done, and people should support expanding human rights and environmental protections.

But the sad reality is that those things will not take effect in time to matter for people currently suffering under the abuses of the way the global economy is currently shaped

and neither will mining in Maine. Mining in Maine will not stop mining overseas. They’ll just extract from both places for more profit, and harm multiple communities.

The only way to possibly stop it is to actually move to more sustainable practices and by pushing for for environmental rights for people.

1. That’s not how logic works.

2. Did you just learn about this problem in school today, and now you think you understand it? It’s a very old, very complex issue. Remind me, since you’re so proud of your opinions, how well Obama’s Conflict Mineral laws worked out for locals in the DRC? Well-intentioned? Yes. Disastrous for local “exploited” labor? Also yes.

This is a false dichotomy logical fallacy, and not worthy of discussion.

A few billion in lithium isn't a lot and luckily we have some strict environmental laws. It wouldn't be economically viable for a mining company to set up shop. They (mostly Chinese mining companies) would prefer to bulldoze villages in Africa and pay them pennies while the Congolese government sees very little of the revenue.

You know it wouldn’t be Mainers’ pockets getting filled.

3. I know it’s unfortunate, but this is what extreme poverty looks like. If you have a solution for extreme poverty, there’s a Nobel Prize in your future. If not, you’re just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. Either way, the answer isn’t making asinine arguments on Reddit.

Lithium is largely mind in South America and China. Basically zero environmental oversight...

Not really, it's NIMBY in action. People want virtue signaling via electric cars, what they don't want is to admit that electric cars are maybe not so good for the environment as they at first appear.

How is protecting a status quo not endorsing its consequences?

And I'm not deluded enough to think that global extreme poverty can be solved, but baring a miraculous shift in human nature, one of the very few ways to force changes on a international scale is combining providing less horrible options (I'm not deluded enough to think that something being mined in the US means there are zero consequences) with significant consequences for those who have the option to take them but elect not too.

Situations where you have an incentive to maintain a horrible situation for profit and no alternative to force groups to pursue instead are behind far too many atrocities for me to be okay with saying "it sucks but we can't fix it"

Why are people acting like this is new? The article referenced is a month old, the "discovery" is from last year. We've debated it on this very sub several times now.

If hell is real the People who fucked over the Congo better be there

The reason to mine it here is the other places are South America China and Africa, where that same industries has far more power far less oversight and can get away with shit like slave labor child labor and buying it from terrorists and warlords who use child soldiers and weaponized rape

Well that sucks

Don't you see, he has a three year old phone, he's sacrificed enough, that 10 year old child soldier has to do his fair share!

Yeah let Africans and South Americans take their fair share of environmental and economic consequences!

The lithium deposit was a year+ ago; that’s in Newry. This is a different deposit of other minerals northwest of Presque Isle.

Ahh, I only got the headline due to the paywall.

It's still the same same though, mining, Maine, well worn arguments from both sides.

Wow must be worth a lot.... to a corporation that wants to extract wealth from the state and then ship it out to a variety of rich share holders across the world.

The only way things like this should be explored is by Maine itself, and then every dollar of profit put back into the state.

Otherwise all the downsides are socialized to everyone living in Maine... while all the profits are privatized to strangers who will never have to deal with the consequences and mess they leave.

I think heavy metals are actually much easier to remove than PFAS, no?

Mountaintop Removal Mining: Digging Into Community Health Concerns

May not be the same type of mining that could happen in Maine, but all mining can wreck the environment. In addition to wrecking the mountains, it leaves toxic pools poised to drown towns below them when they fail.

In general I wouldn't think of myself as a NIMBY either, but I moved to Maine in '91 in large part because it wasn't being turned into a mining wasteland, or being paved over with suburbs. Really hope it doesn't happen.

I feel like I heard about this like 2 months ago.

Without a paywall

https://www.foxbangor.com/news/item/rare-earth-elements-found-at-pennington-mountain/

yes, but the dangers of heavy metals are much more acute. lead poisoning literally makes people more violent

Yah’ now leave it alone and send the geologist with em’

Agree strongly. ‘90 transplant

As someone who grew up around refineries/what is now called Cancer Alley, we do not want this here. I promise you government and corporate entities do not truly research or care about long-term health effects. I have lost SO MANY friends to cancer 20-30 years old. Stomach, lungs, brain, bones. You can say it’s coincidence, but the math doesn’t add.

I understand that oil/gas refineries are different from mining operations, but the point is that when there’s a buck to be made, no one cares about the long-term health of workers and locals.

They’ve been remediating the Brooksville mine for decades. There are others, but that one stuck with me considering how beautiful that area is.

Extractive industries are one of the big things that poor countries poor.

70 years ago, Japan and West Germany were desperately poor, now they have surpassed us in quality of life. The key is that their economies needed lots of skilled labor and they had the political wisdom to realize skilled labor comes from investing in people: good schools, good health care, government that has to serve the community not just manage it.

70 years ago Russia was in good shape relative to the rest of the. Europe and Japan were reset, China and India still developing, Africa colonized, only the Americas remained as an economic rival.

But so much of Russia was turned into mines and fossil fuels to feed the industrial core of the Soviet Union - such as the area that's now the (pre-war) Russia-Ukraine border. Now, well, Russia has some moderately wealthy places in the west, but a ton of corruption and underdevelopment, especially in places whose economy has been dominated by extraction. And they're literally in a middle of a war trying to conquer the old industrial region, largely motivated by nostalgia for the Soviet days.

Shelling factories is a stupid way to add industrial capacity. Not only because they'll need to be rebuilt, but because the skilled labor to rebuild and staff them is forced to run away and the only way to replace them is to have a functioning society of your own. It's worse than pointless to conquer manufacturing areas.

Conquering natural resources, though, that makes sense.

So, anyway, yes we should mine rather than importing. But we need to enforce a fair deal for the public. And use tariffs to punish multinationals that abuse poor countries.

Fuck tariffs, we should be creating options other than abusing poor countries and throwing CEOs in jail for not using those options.

In before a group of people who would never visit northern Maine pipe in with their opinions.

as a new jerseyan living in maine, you dont want to smell like secaucus i promise

If we don't make as much money as we can off of our resources, someone else will eventually come here and do it with their own best interest in mind. Mine it all.

Money in the bank. Its not going anywhere.

My vote is to sit on it until is more valuable, and better mining methods have been developed.

Its been there for millions of years, what’s another couple centuries?

People want electric cars because dinosaur juice costs $4 a gallon and electricity is much cheaper (and free for anyone with solar panels). They're also more fun to drive and require less maintenance. It has nothing to do with "virtue signaling."

A non-affiliated website from some earlier resistance to Wolfden Mining from Ontario and their plan for mining adjacent to Cobscook Bay. Eventually, the town of Pembroke decided to create an ordinance protecting their water from polymerallic sulfide mining.Resist Maine Mining

For goodness sakes, don’t let the Chinese buy the rights to it!!!!

I get the feeling the opponents would be against this even if environmentally responsible practices were assured and that none of give a damn about the County otherwise. We want all the benefits of new technology, including renewable energy and energy storage but aren’t willing to contribute to what it takes to get there. All those elements have to come from somewhere, we need to be willing to assume a share of the burden.

Sounds like a NIMBY to me. That’s fine, but own it.

Canada will now invade

Ohhh, that explains why the government has to give tax incentives...

Another point to remember is that currently electric cars are not paying road tax since they're not buying fuel. At some point we're going to need to change that, we can't have a large proportion of our road users not supporting the roads they're using.

So it becomes political? Not economically smart. Got it

Worst discovery ever for our beloved state!

I'm still just waiting to go panning for gold near Bald Mountain...

Economically smart and smart are two very different things politically.

It's currently illegal to strip mine in Maine, they'll have to figure out a way around the regs first. Watch out for an increase in mining Co money in our elections and ballots

Yeah and our regs will make it too expensive comparatively so they'll lobby to weaken them.

Gas tax isn't the only way that taxpayers support road maintenance, but yes ultimately we'll need to replace the lost gas tax revenue somehow. Not really an insurmountable problem...

That blurry picture of 3 boomers looking at something is hilarious and makes me not worried.

Its not the only way but EVs pay zero gas tax. On top of subsidies from the government...

Subsidies cut both ways though. Oil companies get about $20 billion in our tax dollars every year (and have for decades).

I prefer strip malls or clubs.