Thacker Pass lithium mine was ordered to stop pumping water after a rancher proved it was draining his senior water rights, delaying the largest US lithium project by two years

Lithium Americas' Thacker Pass mine in Humboldt County, Nevada is designed to be the largest lithium mine in North America, producing enough lithium carbonate to supply batteries for roughly 800,000 electric vehicles per year. But in June 2025, the Nevada State Engineer ordered the mine to cease unauthorized water pumping after rancher Edward Bartell demonstrated that the mine's water use was depleting the aquifer his cattle operation has depended on since 2008 under senior water rights. The water conflict forced a legal and commercial reckoning. Bartell's senior water rights predate the mine's permits, and under Nevada's prior appropriation doctrine, his claim takes priority regardless of the mine's economic importance. The resulting lawsuits, appeals, and cease-and-desist orders pushed the mine's full-capacity production target from 2026 to 2028. At peak construction, 1,800 workers were expected on-site by summer 2026, and the delay cascades through the entire domestic lithium supply chain at a moment when the US is trying to reduce dependence on Chinese-processed lithium. The dispute was eventually settled when Lithium Americas purchased Bartell's water rights directly, but the resolution highlights a structural problem: hard-rock and clay lithium extraction in the arid American West competes directly with agricultural water users who hold legally superior claims. This is not unique to Thacker Pass. Every proposed lithium project in Nevada's basins faces the same prior appropriation framework, and ranchers and tribal nations in those basins have water rights that predate any mining permit. The problem persists because western water law was designed for a world where mining and agriculture were the only competing users, and both were assumed to have adequate supply. Climate change has reduced recharge rates in Nevada's hydrographic basins, making the zero-sum competition between lithium extraction and existing water rights holders sharper. There is no federal mechanism to adjudicate these conflicts efficiently; they play out mine-by-mine, basin-by-basin, through state engineer offices and courts that were not designed to handle the volume or urgency of critical mineral permitting.