The United States is at a strategic crossroads. With demand for rare earth elements (REEs) and other critical minerals at an all-time high—driven by clean energy, electric vehicles, and defense technologies—our current dependence on foreign supplies poses a serious national security and economic risk. Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of abandoned hard rock mines litter the American West, creating environmental hazards and economic dead zones.
This paper proposes a bipartisan path forward: reclaim and repurpose legacy mine waste sites for strategic mineral recovery. Advances in mineral processing and materials science make it economically feasible to extract REEs, precious metals, and strategic materials from historic tailings and waste rock. Doing so not only secures domestic supply chains and revitalizes rural economies, but also accelerates environmental remediation in some of our nation’s most scarred landscapes.
The opportunity is transformative: we can turn waste into wealth, pollution into progress, and dependency into sovereignty.
Background
There are an estimated 240,000 to 500,000 abandoned or inactive mine sites in the western United States. These sites, many created during the 19th and 20th centuries, were mined for gold, silver, copper, and other metals. At the time, elements like lithium, cobalt, and rare earths were not economically valuable—and thus were discarded in tailings piles and waste dumps.
Today, these materials are among the most critical inputs for high-tech manufacturing, defense applications, and clean energy systems. With China currently controlling more than 80% of the global REE supply chain, the U.S. must act decisively to secure alternative sources.
Economic and Technical Feasibility
Recent pilot studies and academic research indicate that extracting strategic minerals from legacy mine waste is both technically viable and economically promising. Technologies such as bioleaching, hydrometallurgy, and AI-powered mineral characterization can identify and recover valuable materials that were once overlooked.
According to conservative estimates, even small-scale recovery operations can yield $1–3 million in materials per site. Multiplied across tens of thousands of sites, this could translate to hundreds of billions of dollars in potential domestic mineral value.
Strategic and Environmental Benefits
1. National Security: Reducing dependence on foreign adversaries for critical materials is a strategic imperative. Reclaiming domestic mineral sources enhances supply chain resilience.
2. Economic Development: Revitalizing rural and tribal communities around abandoned mine sites with new jobs in reclamation, recovery, and research.
3. Environmental Remediation: Many of these sites are environmental liabilities. Remediating them while extracting value reduces cleanup costs and aligns economic and ecological goals.
Policy Recommendations
• Launch a federal Mine Waste Reclamation and Strategic Recovery Act (MWRSRA) to provide grants, tax incentives, and permitting fast-tracks for qualified reclamation projects.
• Direct the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Department of Energy (DOE) to map, prioritize, and assess mineral potential in legacy mine sites.
• Create public-private partnerships to pilot scalable recovery efforts using modern techniques.
• Prioritize rural and tribal economic development zones for first-phase implementation.
• Frame this as a bipartisan opportunity to strengthen America’s autonomy while restoring its lands.
Conclusion
Reclaiming strategic minerals from the ghosts of our industrial past isn’t just good policy—it’s visionary. This is the rare moment where environmental restoration, economic renewal, and national security align. It’s time to act boldly and let the American West rise again—not as a symbol of extractive decline, but as the foundation for a resilient, sovereign future.
Evermost 