Westwater Resources announced that its application for the use of 1500 acre-feet of groundwater per year has been approved by the Department of Natural Resources of the State of Utah.
Image: Lithium ingots with a thin layer of black nitride tarnish. Photo courtesy of Dnn87/Wikipedia.
This water is intended for the development of lithium mining operations at the Company’s Sal Rica Project.
Christopher M. Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “Water rights are critical to the development of lithium brine properties. Utah’s grant of water rights enables us to extract the lithium bearing brines from underground. We believe that owning the right to use the groundwater materially differentiates our exploration projects from others in the area going forward.”
The right to use water is very important in the arid American West, and this right is essential to the development of lithium brine resources at the Sal Rica project. Utah has a robust legal regime for allocating the right to use water, and Westwater carefully followed the regulatory process to secure the groundwater required to develop lithium resources discovered in the basin.
Source: Company Press Release