Two men wearing baseball caps stand in a field of brown grass and weeds.
Scott Honan, a NioCorp executive, left, and a co-worker on the site of a planned niobium mine in Elk Creek, Neb. The fields harbor resources used in everything from fighter jets to car batteries.

Nebraskans Are Sitting on Strategic Metals. Is Mining a Patriotic Duty?

One county has a wealth of minerals essential to defense and the green economy. Mining would transform the community, yet many say they feel a patriotic obligation to dig.

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ELK CREEK, Neb. — In this rural part of Nebraska, county-board agendas include moratoriums on solar farms and some residents scowl when they pass the handful of wind farms that have sprouted. But the idea of a new mine that could help power the transition to renewable energy has received broad support.

The tenor of these quiet flatlands, where deer bounce across gravel roads and neon sunsets scream across the long horizon, would change dramatically if mining for metals like niobium, scandium, titanium and rare earths begins.

But many people here think Southeast Nebraska, dotted with dying downtowns and aging residents, could play a small part in helping to solve a full-blown geopolitical crisis that Doc Evans, a Johnson County commissioner, summed up like this: “The trouble with China.”

Mr. Evans and numerous others welcome the digging that a company called NioCorp wants to begin because they feel it’s their patriotic duty. For too long, they said, the United States has depended on other countries for metals and minerals the nation could find at home, if only someone were willing to spend the money and effort to retrieve them.

“I think it’s good for our country,” said Don Othmer, who lives in Elk Creek, where the mine would be. Relying on other countries for raw materials means “we’re kind of held hostage,” he said.

Geological fate meted out hundreds of millions of years ago left the United States lacking rich stores of many of the raw materials found on the federal list of minerals critical to the economy and national security. The country has relied on imports of certain minerals and metals that are abundant in China and elsewhere and are needed for America’s fighter jets, building materials and cellphone batteries.

The United States is determined to no longer be dependent on other countries, particularly now as these materials, which are also used in making electric-vehicle batteries and for transmitting energy from wind turbines and solar panels to the power grid, are key ingredients for an economy that relies on renewables. Measures enacted under the Biden Administration offer major incentives to mining companies and processing facilities to do their work domestically.

But the biggest incentive is the market demand that has increased the price of metals including rare earths — a set of elements found together, with names like terbium and dysprosium — making it newly economical for mining companies to scour the nation for even small amounts that can be scraped from underneath the soil.

ImageA row of a half-dozen or so fading, two-story commercial brick buildings line an empty small-town street paved with red bricks that are slick with rain.
Downtown Tecumseh, Neb., one of the nearby towns that would feel ripple effects from a new mine.
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Coffee at the Harvest Bowl, a cafe and bowling alley that’s a gathering place in Tecumseh.
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A wind farm in Du Bois, Neb., roughly 20 miles south of Elk Creek.

NioCorp wants to bring in hundreds of workers and heavy drilling equipment to dig the metals. After decades of exploration and looking for financing, it soon may be able to get started, buoyed by new demand for a domestic supply of critical minerals and metals that can power America’s transition to renewable energy. And the company has embraced the messaging that plays well in this conservative area that counts patriotism as a key value.

“It will help America,” said Mark Smith, chief executive of NioCorp, which is based in Colorado.

The federal government is hoping to find new deposits of minerals and metals by carrying out projects to digitize information from 100-year-old geological maps and by flying survey planes all over the country. The government is also financing programs to comb through waste piles of old mines, including coal ash, for materials once deemed worthless. One program tests ways to sift minerals and metals from Superfund sites.

“Can the U.S. meet its own mineral supply needs? It’s a big, complicated question,” said Graham Lederer, researcher at the United States Geological Survey’s Geology, Energy & Minerals Science Center. “Anything could be a resource. You just need to develop the technology and bring the cost down.”

Just outside Elk Creek, pronounced by some locally as “Elk Crick,” workers from NioCorp are clearing trees to prep the land for digging, should it succeed in getting more financing. The company, now listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, said it has lined up German buyers for some of its niobium.

Hundreds of people and a new governor-elect turned up for a series of town halls in November held by NioCorp. The meetings drew investors from Kansas City who snapped photos as they wandered Elk Creek’s tiny downtown past a bank, a post office, small grocery store and the Village Tavern, which is known for its signature drink, the Elk Creek Water (Mountain Dew, Squirt, 7 UP, vodka and gin) as well as an annual event where beef testicles are served (the “Nut Feed”).

“We’ve had a harder time keeping the younger generation here,” said Don Gottula, who owns a propane shop on Main Street. “We need a booster shot, I guess you could say.”

As the hunt for more materials used in batteries continues, energy officials predict more scenes across America like the one in Nebraska, a state with abundant cornfields and cattle but no operating mines. In Utah, a mine has begun producing tellurium. A new cobalt mine in Idaho is expected to be operational this year. New lithium mining is planned for North Carolina, and in California companies are trying out new technology to extract lithium from geothermal brines.

The world may need more than 300 new mines in the next decade to meet demand for electric-vehicle and energy-storage batteries, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

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Don Gottula at his propane shop in Elk Creek. “We’ve had a harder time keeping the younger generation here,” he said.
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Elk Creek’s tallest building, at the Midwest Farmers Co-Op. The mine would bring, among other things, a 10-story processing facility to the area.
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Coffee at Harvest Bowl on a recent morning included conversation about the mine.

In Nebraska, metals that were a distant memory from high school chemistry class have become part of regular conversation. Like most people in the Elk Creek area, any of the dozen or so farmers who gather for morning coffee several days a week before the lanes light up at Harvest Bowl in nearby Tecumseh can speak fluently about niobium.

“Didn’t they put that in Superman’s underwear?” one joked on a recent morning.

Niobium might help batteries hold a charge longer, another said, and that’s a good thing out here where miles separate even gas stations. But did anyone ever consider what happens to the wind turbines and solar panels years from now when they no longer function?

“When they wear out there’s no place to go with them,” said Milton Buchholz, a retired farmer and former county roads department worker.

The conversation turned to the prairie fires and dust storms that swept across parts of Nebraska last summer. The crop-withering drought just won’t let up.

“I’m not convinced whether this is all man-made or God-made,” said Mr. Evans, the county commissioner who sat at a table near farmers in hats advertising pesticides and fertilizer and one that read “cow whisperer.”

“I know that we may be contributing but who did it 100,000 years ago when we had an Ice Age?” he added.

To build the mine here, workers would burrow nearly 2,500 feet into the earth, creating an underground mini city to operate machinery. Construction would take almost three years, requiring 400 workers and convoys of heavy trucks rumbling across the plains surrounding Elk Creek, population 98.

“If we want to give our kids a chance, we’ve got to use the resources we have,” said Harold Richardson, a farmer and retired teacher from Elk Creek.

China is the world’s main producer and processor of scandium and rare earths. America has only one rare earth mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif. It sends its ore to China for processing. (Mr. Smith of NioCorp is the former chief executive of MolyCorp, which used to own the Mountain Pass mine.)

Brazil is by far the world’s biggest producer of niobium, which is used to strengthen steel. China Molybdenum, a state-backed company, bought a key niobium mine in Brazil in 2016.

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Mr. Honan, NioCorp’s chief operating officer, on Beverly Beethe’s farm. “The rocks are different here,” he said.
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Mr. Honan held a core sample.
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Core samples for testing were stacked in sheds on Ms. Beethe’s farm.

The importance of having a domestic stash of metals was highlighted in 2010 when China blocked exports of rare earths to Japan during a dispute over a fishing trawler incident, sending prices soaring. Since then, tensions between the United States and China only have escalated, prompting fears about politically and economically motivated supply-chain disruptions.

NioCorp executives say the amount of metals they could recover at Elk Creek would be scant compared to the Chinese supply; they are still determining whether they can economically retrieve the rare earths. The company plans to dig titanium, too (China, Japan and Russia are among the world’s biggest titanium producers), but niobium is the most abundant metal at the site, and if operations go forward, Elk Creek would be the only niobium mine in America.

Company executives say they expect demand for the metal to increase for use in new versions of lithium ion electric vehicle batteries under development.

NioCorp has obtained all the necessary permits to start digging. NioCorp’s customers may need to look overseas for processing. A new processing facility that is in the works in Texas could take years to become operational.

“I’d really want to see these activities done in the United States or an allied country” such as Japan or Britain, said Mr. Smith of NioCorp.

New demand for greener sources of energy is fueling interest from Wall Street in the Elk Creek mine. But the messaging from NioCorp tends to focus on the metals’ traditional uses — in oil pipelines and guided missiles, residents said.

“NioCorp is being very thoughtful in how they’re communicating with Southeast Nebraskans,” said State Senator Julie Slama, who represents constituents in Johnson County, which has voted Republican in every presidential election since the 1960s. “In Nebraska, we have a sense of patriotism and desire to serve our country.”

People have been talking about a mine in Elk Creek since the early 1970s when, according to local lore, pilots reported their instruments went haywire while flying over southeast Nebraska. The real story: University researchers received a federal grant to fly over the state with instrumentation that identified changes in the earth’s magnetic field, indicating the possible presence of certain minerals and metals.

“The rocks are different here,” said Scott Honan, NioCorp’s chief operating officer.

Back then local workers were hired to carry out exploratory drilling, digging up hundreds of core samples, tubes of earth, for testing. Stacks of them are stored in metal sheds on Beverly Beethe’s farm, where the mine would be located. Residents signed land leases with the company, which eventually bought 226 acres. Some landowners netted lucrative deals and could receive royalty payouts of as much as $10 million a year.

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Ms. Beethe said she and a few others wondered whether they’d received a fair deal.
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Lavon Heidemann, a NioCorp spokesman, pointed out Ms. Beethe’s farm on a map at the town’s Frontier Cooperative.
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Mr. Heidemann checked on feed prices at the Frontier Cooperative.

But the deals created bad blood. Some residents who were left out were miffed. Others like Ms. Beethe question whether they got a fair deal, especially in an area where the price of farmland has recently skyrocketed.

“The way I got treated, I hope that they don’t treat the community that way,” she said.

Many residents also are worried about damage from the toxic chemicals used in mining and processing.

They wonder about cancer cases near the mine site. Rare earth metals are found alongside radioactive elements. Mr. Smith said that at Elk Creek the amounts are so small they don’t require state licensing, but he said as a precaution NioCorp plans to seek licensing anyway and will carry out required monitoring.

Higher paying jobs would be welcome in the area, residents said, but still they wondered, how will the mine ever be able to find 400 workers? The nearby state prison has tried to fill vacancies by nearly doubling starting pay, to $28 an hour. Staff shortages are so severe at the local school district that the superintendent is pondering a four-day week for the next academic year. He already doubles as a bus driver because he can’t fill the job.

And what if the workers do come? “Where the hell are 400 more people going to eat in this town?” said Tim Weber, who opposes the mine.

Residents like Lavon Heidemann, a former lieutenant governor from Elk Creek, have benefited from the mine already. He was paid to help drill exploratory hole No. 7 back in the 1970s and now works as a local representative for NioCorp, fielding questions from his neighbors.

Mr. Heidemann sometimes stares out from his hilltop farm at the blinking lights on the wind turbines several miles away. They bug him a little. He worries the nation might be transitioning too quickly to renewables. But, he said, the Elk Creek mine would be good for America.

“I wish it wasn’t in my backyard, but it is. Other people sacrificed, and we need to sacrifice too,” Mr. Heidemann said. “I love this country to no end. We have challenges today and if we can help make it a better place in an environmentally safe way then, hot dog, I want to be a part of that.”

Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro.

Dionne Searcey is part of a team that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and author of the book, "In Pursuit of Disobedient Women."  More about Dionne Searcey

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Nebraska, Patriotic Zeal For New Mine. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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