A group of environmental nonprofits and southern Utah residents are suing a mineral company and the state engineer who approved its application to produce lithium along the Green River.  Filed on Tuesday in Utah’s 7th District Court in Moab, the lawsuit names Utah Division of Water Rights director Teresa Wilhelmsen, who also serves as the state engineer, and Blackstone Minerals, a subsidiary of Australian-based Anson Resources. … In 2023, the company filed an application seeking 19 cubic feet per second from aquifers near the Green River — that’s about 14,000 acre-feet of water each year, roughly enough to fill some of the state’s smaller reservoirs. The water, called brine, has a high concentration of salt. Through a relatively novel process called Direct Lithium Extraction, Blackstone would separate the lithium from the brine using what’s called lithium extraction resin and additional water pulled from the Green and Colorado rivers.