An Arizona tribe has been granted a temporary injunction halting a project in which exploratory drilling for lithium was to occur near a spring that has religious significance to the tribe, because the drilling will penetrate an aquifer that supports the flow of water to the spring and disrupt the flow.

On Aug. 2, 2024, the Hualapai Tribe filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona in which the tribe claims the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) illegally approved drilling by an Australian mining company around a spring called Ha’Kamwe’ that is sacred to the Hualapai Tribe.

Since 2019, the mining company, Arizona Lithium, Ltd., has sought approval to drill 131 exploratory wells for lithium on BLM-controlled land near the Big Sandy River Basin in northwestern Arizona, about halfway between Phoenix and Las Vegas, and is adjacent to the Ha’Kamwe’ spring, according to the Hualapai’s complaint.

The tribe says the drilling “project will also create noise, light, vibrations, and other disturbances that will degrade Ha’Kamwe’s character and harm tribal members’ use of the spring for religious and cultural ceremonies. It will adversely impact other resources important to the tribe too, like plants and wildlife,” says the complaint.

Furthermore, the tribe’s complaint says it repeatedly engaged in efforts to protect that property—including submitting multiple public comments, sent several letters of concern and participated in tribal consultations with BLM throughout the planning phase for the project—but the BLM ignored the tribe’s concerns and approved the drilling project. “In doing so, it [BLM] violated its mandate under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Prevention Act (NHPA). The tribe brings suit under those statutes to stop harm to Ha’Kamwe’ and to other natural resources,” the complaint says.

Furthermore, in a written statement, Ka-voka Jackson, the director of the Hualapai Department of Cultural Resources, said, “This lawsuit is to make sure the BLM is going through the proper process.”

The Hualapai Tribe’s written statement also includes sections of emails sent by the BLM to the Hualapai. In those emails, the BLM says that over three years it conducted outreach to tribes other than the Hualapai, including the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, the Colorado River Tribes, the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Salt-River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, and the Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe. The BLM emails also say that input from the tribes is helping the agency work with the company to revise its exploration plan, including removing the use of “a groundwater well within a few hundred feet of Ha’Kamwe’,” and at a nearby staging area.

In addition, the BLM said water needed to support the drilling operations will be trucked to the site, according to Dolores Garcia, public affairs specialist for BLM’s Arizona State Office, and that the drilling company has committed to enabling the Hualapai tribe, and others tribes that might be impacted by the drilling “to monitor ground disturbing activities onsite,” Garcia said.

Despite the BLM’s emails, Jackson expressed skepticism that the agency paid attention to the tribe’s concerns. “It doesn’t feel like the BLM really heard us or took our comments into full consideration,” she said, adding only one portion of the tribe’s land does not border the area where the drilling would take place.

Therefore, it is “surprising, appalling, and frankly disgusting” the BLM is trying to say there are no adverse effect’s on the tribe’s cultural property or cultural resources, according to Jackson, who adds, “the Hualapai tribe does not want this mining project to happen.”

Read the lawsuit.