{"id":620305,"date":"2026-05-03T02:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T02:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/620305\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T02:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T02:22:08","slug":"epa-says-massive-appalachian-lithium-find-could-boost-us-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/620305\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA says massive Appalachian lithium find could boost US independence"},"content":{"rendered":"

(NewsNation<\/a>) \u2014 The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is calling a newly identified lithium<\/a> deposit in the Appalachian Mountains a \u201cgreat find,\u201d saying it could help the United States reduce its reliance on China for critical minerals essential to modern technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou hear a lot about unleashing energy dominance. We also care about batteries and magnets and chips and semiconductors,\u201d EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said during an appearance on \u201cBatya!\u201d this weekend. \u201cWhen we have these own resources within our own country, we should not only be extracting them here \u2014 we should be processing them here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Geological Survey said<\/a> researchers have identified an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of recoverable lithium, largely concentrated in the southern Appalachians in the Carolinas, with additional deposits in the northern Appalachians in Maine and New Hampshire. The lithium is estimated to be worth more than $64 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not enough lithium to power the future, energy CEO says <\/a><\/p>\n

If fully extracted and processed, the lithium could replace roughly 328 years of U.S. imports at last year\u2019s consumption levels, according to federal officials. The mineral is contained in pegmatites, coarse-grained rocks similar to granite.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States was the dominant world producer of lithium three decades ago, and this research highlights the abundant potential to reclaim our mineral independence,\u201d USGS Director Ned Mamula said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Reducing U.S. dependence on China and other foreign suppliers for critical minerals and rare earth elements has been a priority of the Trump administration amid rising geopolitical tensions.<\/p>\n

Zeldin says political confrontations worsen<\/p>\n

Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York, was also asked about political violence following a recent assassination attempt<\/a> targeting President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet at a Washington, D.C., event. He said the escalating rhetoric and incidents of violence in the U.S. \u201calmost feels Third World.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and I saw all these Middle Eastern countries \u2014 everybody was calling their opposition \u2018terrorists,\u2019\u201d Zeldin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you see the rhetoric here in the U.S. go from right\u2011wing Tea Party extremists to the evolution, as they realized that label wasn\u2019t working, and eventually all you\u2019re left with is the next level of saying, \u2018OK, we\u2019re out of words, now we have to start actually confronting our political opposition,\u2019\u201d Zeldin said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen that to the extreme over the past decade, and it\u2019s only gotten worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NewsNation. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(NewsNation) \u2014 The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is calling a newly identified lithium deposit in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[50013,37707,192,268876,19249,26839,70159,79,37043],"class_list":["post-620305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-appalachian-mountains","tag-critical-minerals","tag-environment","tag-house-foreign-affairs-committee","tag-lee-zeldin","tag-lithium","tag-modern-technology","tag-science","tag-u-s-geological-survey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}