Water shortages could prevent the US from mining more lithium, deepening reliance on foreign imports

Lithium mining faces a critical bottleneck in the United States: water. Most proposed mines overlap with drought-prone regions in Nevada, Arizona, and California—areas that simply don't have enough water to support extraction. According to Live Science, this water scarcity threatens to force America into deeper dependence on foreign lithium imports, even as the country pushes to expand domestic battery production for electric vehicles.

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