A bit of history (Bill has been here as long or longer then me)
There is actually a secondary team in place at this time that is focusing on the Nevada lithium to determine the feasibility. However, you are correct, the southern project is company's primary focus; however, they are not forgetting Nevada.
The company has two revenue sources from the Nevada clay deposits.
1 - A kitty litter production site in Nevada
2 - Fracking clay
Lithium will be the 3rd and hopefully the biggest revenue source once they determine best way to separate the clay and lithium.
Western Lithium WLCDF was originally working with a German engineering firm to develop a process to remove the lithium from the clay. Then WLCDF developed the frackin clay as a source of revenue while developing the Nevada Lithium. The product(endorsed by drilling industry experts) came out right before the oil prices crashed and the fracking drillers all went out of business.
Then LAC (southern Lithium reserve) and Western Lithium (Nevada Lithium reserve) merged with Western Lithium the buyer (new symbol LACDF). We now controlled two top ten lithium reserves in the world.
The kitty litter factory in Nevada came on line somewhere in this time period.
LACDF then partnered up with SQM and started developing the southern reserve.
LACDF did the 1:5 reverse split to get PPS high enough for the NYSE listing, which will become the only pure Lithium play on the NYSE.
Now we wait for
1 - NYSE uplist
2 - 2019 lithium production - southern reserves
3 - development of Nevada reserves (not sure of time line there though)