Giant Cobalt Mine in Central Idaho Comes to a Halt
An aerial view of Jervois cobalt mine area near Salmon, Idaho in central Idaho. Photo credit: EcoFlight
The Idaho Cobalt Operations (ICO) is a major cobalt mine 25 miles outside of Salmon, Idaho. Back in 2019, the Australian mining company Jerovis Global took over the site to complete construction and expected to be running at full operations in 2023. The Jervois cobalt mine would be the only cobalt mine in the United States if operations are able to move forward. But, there are a number of other worrisome cobalt exploration projects being proposed in the Idaho Batholith. Cobalt mainly is used for rechargeable batteries that are found in our smartphones and electric vehicles.
However, things do not always go as planned, especially in the mining industry. On March 29, 2023, Jervois announced a halt in construction due to the low cobalt prices in the United States and the inflationary impacts on construction costs. Cobalt has plummeted in price with prices dropping by over 50% just in the last year. The company hopes to complete construction once prices have recovered. This is partly disconcerting in that the financial assurances promised from the operations of the mine for reclamation were already below the figure presented by the USFS - when adjusted for inflation, these prices are tens of millions of dollars short, already.
Mines throughout Idaho, and nationwide, commonly can have their operations suspended due to the fluctuation of prices for metals and minerals. For example, the Thompson Creek Mine was placed on a “care and maintenance” management plan in 2014. This means the mine is in a holding pattern and production has been suspended until the market shifts to more favorable conditions. Seven years later from its start, there has been no sign of Thompson Creek restarting operations, which raises concern for the potential of a massive open-pit molybdenum mine led by CuMoCo to open just upstream of the Boise River. With such high uncertainty in the market, it’s important to question if starting some of these mining projects is worth the damage they cause to the environment.
This is not the first time that the ICO has dealt with roadblocks in moving forward on a project. Several companies have owned the mine’s rights. The project has taken close to two decades to come to fruition with many stopping points along the way. These projects are not in the hands of the companies that operate them but are wrapped around the finger of the invisible hand of real-world demand.
The area of the ICO has already been subjected to environmental degradation in the past. Jervois’ mine site sits right next to the old Blackbird Mine on the Idaho Cobalt belt. Blackbird was an open-pit cobalt mine that was proposed by the EPA to be on the National Priority List as a superfund site in 1993 because of the harm that the mining operations had caused. The mine site sits within the Salmon River watershed and is located directly above Panther Creek. During times of high water flows, contaminated soil, sediments, and tailings have been released from the mine site causing widespread pollution in the critical watershed.
It has always been clear that mining companies are not here to be environmental saviors, but rather are here to make a profit. It is critical that the global mining industry takes a closer look at what projects are actually crucial and what ones are frivolous. Recently, cobalt has fallen in the ranks as a favorable material for batteries. Metals such as lithium and nickel are gaining more traction as their properties allow for cheaper, lighter, and higher energy-density batteries. Does Idaho need to exploit its land for cobalt with such uncertainty on the need for the mineral? It is questionable whether cobalt will be the answer for the transition of energy sources and if it is worth the extraction with the degradation that would be left behind.
An important thing to remember about the push for clean energy is that the transition to these energy sources needs to be clean, too. Mining companies push the message that extracting more minerals is the answer to our problems, when in reality there are other, and better, options. For example, there is an opportunity to recycle many of these minerals that are used for batteries. Now more than ever it is imperative that we identify sustainable solutions for our energy sources and transition over the correct way.
Clean water is becoming more scarce with the effects of climate change worsening. We must do everything we can to protect the critical resource.
