King’s Mountain Lithium Mine gets $90 M for expansion
(Concluded from yesterday.)
Lithium in the Mountain Mines and the Department of Defense Wants It
Some of the richest lithium sources in the world are located in Western North Carolina.
Two lithium mines already exist in the mountainous region of Western North Carolina. Albemarle Kings Mountain, is one mining operation and is touted as one of the world’s most advanced lithium material sites. They describe their mining as a lithium ecosystem:
Albermarle Kings Mountain Mining Operation
The Kings Mountain, North Carolina, site represents Albemarle’s mine-to-market strategy, encompassing all elements of the lithium ecosystem needed to power everything from consumer electronics and electric vehicles to life-saving medical devices…The Kings Mountain site has one of the world’s richest lithium depositions, representing an essential part of the global clean energy transformation.
Albemarle Corporation has been working hard to resume open pit mining at the Kings Mountain site which has been idled since early 1990s.
Dept. of NC Environmental Quality – lithium deposits
The Department of Defense Invests $90 million September 2023
The Department of Defense (DOD), entered into a $90 million agreement September 2023. The funds are earmarked to help support “Albemarle’s planned re-opening of their Kings Mountain, N.C. lithium mine to increase domestic production of lithium for the nation’s battery supply chain.”
BlackRock Inc. Buys Into Albermarle’s Lithium Mine Operation, too
BlackRock Inc wants a bigger piece of the mine, too. The largest investment firm in the world, BlackRock, increased its ownership in Albermarle Corp by buying over 2 million shares in August 31, 2024, less than a month before Hurricane Helene hit the mountains.
The coincidences just keep piling up. Piedmont lithium mining company was struggling due to community opposition. Piedmont Lithium’s North Carolina operation is located 30 miles west of Charlotte in Gaston County. Piedmont Lithium has interests in Tennessee, North Carolina, Ghana and Canada but “industry headwinds are causing major changes at the startup company.” The term headwinds means in layperson, making company growth more difficult.
The company had much higher and active value until mid 2023 when it ran into local opposition and was having trouble with expansion plans in Tennessee. But in August 2024 , they scrapped their proposed processing facility in Etowah, Tennessee, and they will now be “incorporated into the company’s proposed Carolina Lithium project, covering a 1,548-acre tract in Gaston County.”
The company declared: “Carolina Lithium is one of only two significant projects in the U.S. Based on published technical studies, we expect Carolina Lithium to be a low-cost producer …and a key contributor to U.S. energy security.”
Their mining permit was just finalized in May of 2024 after the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Energy, Mineral, and Land Resources approved the permit application April 2024.
Carolina Lithium: Proposed Integrated Lithium Project
Hurricane Helene has arrived just in time to clear out the property owners local to the mining interests in Western North Carolina.
Piedmont Lithium was heavily opposed in Gaston County by local residents and commissioners. But now it appears the opposition has been eliminated.
“National Security Assets”– Quartz Mines for Tech Industries Impacted
Two quartz mines in Spruce Pine, NC produce “the world’s purest quartz, which formed in the area some 380 million years ago. The material is a key component in the global supply chain for semiconductor chips, which power everything from smartphones and cars to medical devices and solar panels.”
According to the two companies, Siblelco and The Quartz Corp, that separately manage the two mines, they are making strides in getting their mines up and running again. The largest delay may be the specialized workers most of whom have been displaced by the storm and floods.
Semiconductor manufacturers may run into extended delays until these two mines are up and running once again. CNN Business reports:
“You’re building these incredibly complicated chips that have, in some cases, 100 billion transistors, 100 billion tiny little machines, on a chip that is the size of your thumbnail … One atom being out of place could mean a defect that breaks the chip,” said Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And while quartz is abundant around the world, the kind of ultra-high-purity quartz mined in Spruce Pine is not. The Spruce Pine mines provide an estimated 80% to 90% of the world’s high-purity quartz — experts say the exact amount is proprietary and unknown — supplying semiconductor manufacturers like chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Other quartz sources in the US and around the world require purification processes that are time consuming and far inferior to the special quartz found, so far, at these two mines in North Carolina. The mines are considered a national strategic asset.
Gusher Knob—Another Quartz Company – May Now Expand Rapidly
I have discovered another company in the same affected region—Land & Mineral Company— Gusher Knob which is currently developing joint venture and extraction partners to begin mining the Gusher Knob land tract containing another ultra-high purity quartz deposit.
I expect their business will pick up rapidly now in the wake of property damage from Hurricane Helene.
Asheville to become a Smart City?
Asheville, NC is the largest town in the damaged reason, and it has suffered grave damage too, as we’ve reported above. There have been plans going back over eight years to convert Asheville to a Smart City. Because of the damage including lack of electricity and water, the opportunity now presents itself to implement the smart city plans for Asheville.
Because of its size, Asheville may survive and become the regional hub for the future plans of Western North Carolina.
[The writer seems not to understand what smart cities are.]
Seizure of Private Lands
The Federal government can seize land. The power of eminent domain, explained as the seizure of private property for public use, has been exercised for a variety of reasons over the decades. Expanding rail and roadways, creating parks and many other reasons have been used to seize land.
There is a legal requirement that the landowner be compensated “fairly.”
The technique of condemnation cases was acknowledged by the Supreme Court and has been used to appropriate property for public uses from the establishment of a post office to the building of a railroad.
The History of the Federal Use of Eminent Domain describes the legal issues and development of this federal law.
Rock Creek Park, running through Washington DC and into Maryland, was developed using eminent domain.
The Many Values of Mountain Land to Globalist Interests
I have touched on the growing demand and national security significance for globally scarce lithium and for precious quartz, both of which have traditionally been mined in this region. But there is an even greater value, at least to the federal government over time, in this great swath of the Appalachians to those who wish to embrace globalist values enshrined in the United Nations 2030 and 2050 Goals.
I do not embrace globalism, as it has demonstrated an utter disregard for individual sovereignty, freedoms, Constitutional values and basic American rights. But the Biden/Harris US administration has completely embraced globalism, doing all that it can to increase the US globalist transformation.
United Nations 2030 and 2050 Goals and the Value of Carbon Credits
The UN has established a Global Biodiversity Framework that calls for a 2050 goal of all ecosystem integrity being advanced, with “an increase of at least 15% in the area, connectivity and integrity of natural ecosystems, supporting healthy and resilient populations of all species…”
In layman’s language this means people are no more important than “all” species and non-human, i.e. natural ecosystems need to be expanded. In other words, remove the human influence on the region.
The International Institute for Sustainability (IIS) is “a Brazilian private non-profit organization whose mission is to develop transformative solutions for a sustainable world, based on Science [sic] and other forms of knowledge.”
The IIS partners with the UN and other international biodiversity international organizations and has organized the Nature Map Explorer that identifies and maps a huge quantity of information about the terrestrial habitats, human impact, species richness, biomass carbon density and more, along with the areas of global significance for conservation.
The Appalachians Have UN Designated Global Significance for Conservation
One of the richest areas of “global significance for conservation” in the US is the exact region of Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee that has been devastated by Hurricane Helene.
It appears from rumors coming out of Chimney Rock and surrounding areas that a condemnation seizure is ongoing. Brutal, illegal, immoral and downright evil in the abandonment of the local citizens—but I have also seen this in Lahaina on Maui before and there is a long history of eminent domain.
Nature Map Explorer: “Areas of global significance for conservation”- Eastern US Closeup of targeted North Carolina Tennessee mountain area (in orange)
The lands in Western North Carolina already have several state and federal parks and forest lands, and if many of the communities are now abandoned or condemned, Nature could be encouraged to regenerate in the region, just as is hypothesized in government and academic
papers.
Wild Forest Terrains Can Become a Commodity Producing Profits
If the mountain area is returned to the wild and becomes unpopulated by humans, the future owners of the land–federal or state governments and their agents– will have reclaimed a natural forest wilderness that becomes a powerful carbon sink, which absorbs more carbon than it produces.
Owners of carbon sinks can become part of the formal
carbon exchange which allows companies that produce a lot of carbon (say in their manufacturing business or their operation) to buy credits offsetting their excess carbon.
The forest terrain itself becomes a kind of a commodity exchangeable for money.
For example, a reforestation project that involves planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can produce carbon credits based on the amount of carbon that the trees sequester over time.
Once a third party verifies these projects, the resulting carbon credits can then be sold to individuals or companies seeking to offset their emissions.
I expect a few specialized, high value mines will be able to co-exist in such an environment.
Out of Crisis Come New Opportunities … for Some
The State of North Carolina, the US federal government, the mining industries, the future carbon credit investors, academics, and environmental nonprofits will be able to profit from the damage done by the historic hurricane Helene.
In a forthcoming column, I will be examining the weather conditions and control that steered this massive, once-in-a-thousand-year storm directly to the Appalachians.
For the rest of us, the citizens, the regular folks.
There are just too many of us, and depopulation is underway. But we refuse to give up to the plans of the global predators. We urge citizens everywhere to work with their local counties, their municipalities, their counties and their states to preserve individual liberties, freedoms, and property rights.
Work with your federal Congressmen and Senators also but focus especially on all your local representatives. May God protect us all against the diabolical carelessness and cruelty of our captured governments.
Primary Author: Ginger Breggin
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Exposing Global Predators