The Hualapai Nation sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Friday over its approval of a lithium exploration project near Wikieup, Arizona, alleging the federal agency did not properly evaluate the project’s potential impacts on the local aquifer that feeds a nearby spring that is sacred to the tribe. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions taken by tribes as mining companies propose new projects to extract minerals critical to the energy transition with mines that threaten tribal communities and lands important to their cultures, traditions and histories. The nation, and especially Western states where vast amounts of federal lands remain open for extractive industries, is seeing a boom of new mining proposals for minerals like lithium, the soft, silvery metal used in the batteries that power electric vehicles and store solar and wind energy. But the projects to mine those critical minerals can come at the expense of the landscapes, water supplies, air quality and wildlife rural and indigenous communities depend on, research has found, often leading them to oppose the projects.