around the Southlands: a "green" mining boom

From North Carolina to Arkansas, new opportunities emerge

The sleepy Arkansas town of Smackover—whose extractive history is made clear by a pumpjuck displayed at its downtown crossroads—may soon be the center of a lithium-mining hub / Wikimedia

“Welcome to the Lithium Belt,” writes Clare Fiesler in The Post and Courier, in the most comprehensive story I’ve yet seen on Southern lithium mining.

Lithium can be found in the rocky soils where the Carolinas meet Georgia—in rare form. Elsewhere, lithium tends to be distilled out of minerals contained in groundwater; here you can find shining green rocks—a much more highly concentrated form of the melt. The demand for lithium is booming, thanks to a new focus on electric vehicles—as well as a stricture in the Inflation Reduction Act that will give buyers a $7,500 tax credit, but only if 40% of the battery metals are sourced from the U.S. The new “Lithium Belt” may be home to three separate lithium operations by 2030.

Some locals blame old mines here—which operated from the 1940s through the 1970s—for…