True, but pumped storage can be made ridiculously large given favorable terrain. I've been to one that pumps 5 million tonnes of water up 800 meters (half a mile of head!), generating up to 1GW on the way back down. It probably costs less to maintain that thing than to charge and discharge an equivalent amount of lithium batteries every day.

Density isn’t everything. It’s likely a lot cheaper and less environmentally destructive to dig a big hole in the ground than to manufacture a lithium battery.

That is not entirely a given. Large eathworks have important knock effects on the environment and wildlife. We tend to think that dams and such are harmless but they change their surroundings radically. I had experience living next to one which modified the local climate and made a large contribution to the desertification of the place.

Stripmining was not exactly "environmentally beneficial" ... and that is literally digging a big hole.