Sourcing Critical Minerals through Superfund Mine Site Cleanup
The Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Technology Assessment Initiative (EMRTAI) is an EPA-funded initiative focused on driving technological innovation in characterizing and recovering critical minerals in waste materials at Superfund legacy hard rock mine and mineral processing sites.
Technology assessments are the core of the Initiative and designed to generate high quality performance data to support decision-making in technology selection for treatment and beneficial reuse of waste materials including chat, tailings, slag, waste rock, contaminated soils/sediment, and mining influenced water (MIW). Stakeholders from across mining and remediation industries help guide the framework for technology assessments that use waste materials from legacy mine sites within the Superfund program as feedstocks. Technologies at TRL 3 through commercially available may be accepted into the Initiative for bench-scale, pilot-scale, or full-scale technology demonstrations in a laboratory or at a Superfund site.
How does EMRTAI work?
The EMRTAI is operated as a public-private partnership through a cooperative agreement between the U.S. EPA and a private nonprofit testing and evaluation organization (Battelle Memorial Institute). As a third-party organization, Battelle is leading the EMRTAI, including the Technology Assessment and Outreach activities conducted under the Initiative. EPA’s role in the cooperative agreement is to provide technical and quality assurance support to promote the success of the Initiative. The EPA logo is used with permission* from EPA.
EMRTAI is led by EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) and Office of Mountains, Deserts, and Plains (OMDP). EPA OMDP works alongside the U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Department of Energy to identify nontraditional, domestic sources of critical minerals, such as mine wastes (tailings or waste rock) and mining-influenced waters often found at hardrock mine cleanup sites. EPA assists in evaluating critical mineral recovery technologies and funds and coordinates lab studies and analysis to help offset mining cleanup costs.
To learn more, visit EPA’s website, Critical Mineral Recovery at Legacy Hardrock Mine Sites.
What’s new?
Technology Assessments
Technology assessments for critical minerals recovery from mining influenced water kick-off in October 2025. These assessments follow the framework in the draft general protocol.
Call for Applications
A Call for Applications for technology assessments is open as of September 25, 2025. Applications will be accepted for the following types of technologies:
Critical minerals recovery from mining-influenced water
Critical minerals recovery from solid mine waste (including chat, waste rock, contaminated soils/sediment, slag, etc.)
Characterization of critical minerals in solid mine waste
Upcoming Events
Our next Stakeholder Group will be meeting on January 27, 2026.
The agenda will be released soon!