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The Trump administration has issued an Executive Order to build minerals refining facilities on military bases and other federally-owned lands. This stems from the president’s speech to Congress promising to expand extraction and processing of energy transition minerals, particularly rare earth elements. These minerals are used in renewable energy technologies like electric vehicle batteries; they also have military uses. The previous Trump and Biden administrations both used the Defense Production Act to encourage domestic mining and mineral processing.
Moving mineral processing and refining onto military bases will neither make US residents safer nor the world more peaceful. And it certainly will not alleviate the climate crisis.
Minerals processing is an extremely polluting process, especially for rare earth elements. Building and operating these facilities on bases would not contain their impacts to a military base; impacts would spread downwind and downstream, affecting military families and surrounding communities.
Activities on military bases have a history of polluting nearby air and water, including uranium mining and milling in the Navajo Nation and surrounding areas. Military bases already host 141 Superfund sites, but if “broadened beyond Pentagon installations, about 900 of the 1200 or so Superfund sites in America are abandoned military facilities or sites that otherwise support military needs.” Simultaneously, the Environmental Protection Agency removes uranium mine waste from Navajo Nation one cleanup at a time, where a 2016 study found that 27% of the 599 participants have high levels of uranium in their bodies.
Congress has repeatedly considered and passed laws compensating persons suffering public health problems caused by pollution on, and beyond, military bases. Instead of bringing more polluting industries onto military bases, Congress should address existing harms and reauthorize and expand the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act, to help uranium miners, millers, and those downwind and downstream from atomic testing, including the Indigenous Peoples of the Marshall Islands.
Building mineral processing on bases still needs public review, including under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act. The administration has proposed dissolving the Council of Environmental Quality rules for NEPA, but DOD’s NEPA reviews are still required for communities on and near bases, as well as for the public impacted by these facilities.
Mineral supply is not a new issue for the Department of Defense: it already manages a stockpile of metals and other materials it needs for military uses. Congress funds procurement for this stockpile in each year’s National Defense Authorization Act. Some members of Congress support filling the stockpile with more recycled content. The military also recycles certain ETMs, like germanium, from tank windows, rifle scopes, and jet engines. This recycling program helps reduce geopolitical tensions associated with trade restrictions other governments have or may impose upon the US.
The US is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in history, and our military is the single largest producer of GHGs in the world. Instead of bringing polluting industries onto military bases, Congress and the Department of Defense should take action to correct past and ongoing harms and reduce the need for mined and processed minerals, including by reauthorizing and expanding RECA. Most importantly, Congress should dramatically reduce the Defense budget to reduce mineral demand, while implementing circular economy policies that accomplish the same goal.