Federal officials have selected a second Black Hills mining proposal for an expedited permitting process.
The Bear Lodge Rare Earth Mining Project is on the Wyoming side of the Black Hills, and it’s expected to produce rare earth elements critical to alloy and magnet production.
It will be included in FAST-41, a federal process meant to improve coordination among permitting agencies and hold them accountable to deadlines. The 25-person federal Permitting Council says it can shave 18 months off a project’s review time.
The project has been stalled for several years by permitting, market saturation from China and challenges raising capital, according to reporting from the Cowboy State Daily. China processes a majority of the world’s rare earth elements.
Wyoming Republican U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis said the proposed mine will encourage American mineral independence.
“The Bear Lodge Project in northeastern Wyoming is on track to become an important domestic source of critical elements like neodymium and praseodymium, which our defense systems and high-tech manufacturers depend on,” Lummis said in a news release.
Rare earth elements have multiple uses, ranging from batteries and lasers to radiation shielding for nuclear reactions. A specific element identified for the Bear Lodge project would be used to make magnets for electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and other applications.
The first fast-tracked Black Hills project — the long-lingering Dewey-Burdock uranium mining proposal in southwestern South Dakota — remains in progress on multiple permitting items, according to the federal infrastructure permitting dashboard.
The Dewey-Burdock project is named for rural locations near Edgemont along the southwestern edge of the Black Hills. It has been in the works for nearly two decades. It requires numerous federal, state and local permits, and has been mired in administrative and court appeals for years. The Black Hills Clean Water Alliance, NDN Collective and Oglala Sioux Tribe are among the project’s opponents.
If the Dewey-Burdock permits are approved at the federal level, the state can begin its own permitting process. A spokeswoman with the company leading the project said she hopes it will begin development within the next couple of years.
The Bear Lodge Rare Earth project is proposed by Rare Element Resources, which would operate the mining and processing arms of the project. The company completed construction of a $60 million rare earth processing and demonstration plan in Upton, Wyoming, late last year.
Rare Element Resources did not respond to requests for comment from South Dakota Searchlight.
The FAST-41 process was created by Title 41 of the “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act,” signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015. It originally focused on transportation infrastructure. It was expanded to mining projects during the final days of Donald Trump’s first presidential administration in 2021.
Trump signed an executive order last year directing federal officials to accelerate domestic critical mineral production, including copper, zinc, titanium and uranium. His administration is increasingly using FAST-41 to carry out the order.