![]() “They don’t want the persistent blasting, traffic, dust and environmental degradation that comes with pit mining. “Plenty of folks in this rural pocket aren’t willing to go that far,” E&E News reporter Mike Soroghan wrote about the proposed mines in November. launched a bid to build four 500-foot deep pit lithium mines, which was met by split reaction from residents. In November, the region became part of an environmental justice debate after local mineral developer Piedmont Lithium Inc. Though much of the lithium industry in the US is clustered in the west, particularly in Southern California, according to the US Geological Survey, one of 20 known lithium deposits in the US surrounds Charlotte, North Carolina. Though the pilot program is specifically earmarked for workforce development, fragments of the energy industry have recently committed time to exploring the feasibility of extracting lithium from parts of Appalachia. Other actions taken by working group member agencies: the Department of the Interior announced funding for abandoned mine reclamation projects in West Virginia the Environmental Protection Agency created two grants for job training and environmental cleanup in Huntington and the Economic Development Administration announced a federal award for a former mining town in Kentucky. The program is part of a broader endeavor by a federal Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization that uses infrastructure dollars to build out jobs in 13 Appalachian states, from Mississippi to New York. “Nobody is coming here to tell West Virginia what it should do because West Virginia is figuring it out and it’s really exciting.” “This community is embracing new chances and opportunity in their own way,” Granholm told local broadcaster WSAZ on Friday. The plan expresses specifically an intent to target pilot programs in communities “where energy and automotive industries once held sway.” In a part of the country where former fossil fuel towns are pockmarked with empty storefronts and lined by abandoned oil and gas wells, the DOE is making bets that renewable energy could offer a new way out from economic tailspin. “We should be building the full supply chain here.” “American leadership in the global battery supply chain will be based not only on our innovative edge, but also on our skilled workforce of engineers, designers, scientists, and production workers,” Granholm said in the statement.
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