[Rockhounds] Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

The world’s richest known lithium deposit lies deep in the woods of western
Maine, in a yawning, sparkling mouth of white and brown rocks that looks
like a landslide carved into the side of Plumbago Mountain.

Mary Freeman and her husband Gary found the deposit five years ago while
hunting for tourmaline, a striking, multi-colored gemstone found in the
region.

The Freemans make their living selling lab supplies through the
Florida-based company they founded 40 years ago, Awareness Technology. But
their true love is digging for gemstones, which has brought them for years
to Mary’s home state of Maine, the site of some of the best tourmaline
hunting in the world.

Now, the Freemans want to expand this pit, near the town of Newry, Maine,
so they can mine spodumene, crystals that contain the lithium the U.S.
needs for the clean energy transition. The timing of their discovery, in
what has been named Plumbago North, is remarkable; the Freemans have
stumbled across one of the only hard-rock sources of lithium in the U.S. at
a time when the material is desperately needed for the clean energy
transition.

But like just about everywhere in the U.S. where new mines have been
proposed, there is strong opposition here. Maine has some of the strictest
mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging
for metals in open pits larger than three acres.

https://time.com/6294818/lithium-mining-us-maine/