I found this article, linked below, while I was searching for information about a gold mine located immediately south of Turquoise Ridge in Humboldt County, Nevada.  The article is from back in February, but it addresses proposals in the Nevada House and the Nevada Senate as they relate to the possibile increase in the Nevada Mining Tax.  In the article the comments of Ken Tiption, Chairman of the Humboldt County Board of Commissioners stuck out to me as being particularly important and revealing about how, at least this important member of that Board, feels about the importance of mining to Humboldt County and it also addresses head on the impact on mining that would occur if the proposed increase in the mining tax in Nevada becomes a reality instead of a proposal.  

Joint resolutions would more than quintuple state taxes on mining in Nevada | The Sierra Nevada Ally

Ken Tipton is the chair of the Humboldt County Board of Commissioners.

“I think it’s horrible,” Tipton said by phone in September of 2020. “I think it’s a rape of the rural counties by the metropolitan areas, specifically Las Vegas, Clark County. I don’t think that if they wanted to bring a bill like this, they should have been brought up in a special session. It should have been brought up in a general session. The mines are very, very important to the rural counties like Elko and Humboldt County, Lander County. I don’t know the numbers for those other counties, but I know that for Humboldt County the net proceeds is a little over 20 percent of our total revenues received. Just under 17 percent of our general fund revenues, so it’s the single largest form of revenue for the county.”

The bold face and italic type emphasis was added by me and not present in the original article.

The article that started me searching for more information was:  i-80 Gold completes acquisition of Getchell project in Nevada; shares up – Market Trading Essentials

In that second article it shows how a mining project just immediately south of Turquoise Ridge will be the focus of a gold mining company for open pit mining of gold.  It is the location of that mine, the Getchell project, that caught my eye.  The project is located in Humboldt County, Nevada... the same county where Lithium Americas intends to develop its Thacker Pass lithium mine.  So all of the political, ecological and social/societal obstructions that LAC will and has already faced will also be ones for i-80 Gold to overcome in their own plan to develop the Getchell project.  They will also face the same Humboldt Board of County Commissioners in their own journey toward developing their mine.   LAC is far from alone in pursuit of its plan to proceed from development to production in Humboldt County, a county that depends to a significant extent for tax revenues from the existing mines within its borders now and for the future.   

Okiedo