[ Once a tourist destination, the Salton Sea faces ecological
collapse, toxic dust storms—and maybe a lithium boom.]
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LITHIUM MINING IN CALIFORNIA’S SALTON SEA  
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Paige Oamek
November 16, 2022
Rural America In These Times
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_ Once a tourist destination, the Salton Sea faces ecological
collapse, toxic dust storms—and maybe a lithium boom. _

, David Tipling/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

 

SALTON SEA, Calif. — An October storm of noxious dust sweeps
across the desert, turning the sky sepia and choking out residents.
Like water bodies across the West, the 340-square-mile saline lake
known as the Salton Sea is drying up as drought, fueled by climate
change, further dwindles its inflow from the Colorado River basin. As
the lake evaporates, its solution of pesticides, chemicals and heavy
metals grows more concentrated. Winds whip the hazardous lakebed dust
into the air, and more children here than anywhere else in California
visit emergency rooms or are hospitalized with
asthma-related illnesses.

It’s an environmental disaster with a decades-long history. But
mining companies see something else in the perennially-evaporating
Salton Sea: opportunity. They want to harvest the lithium-rich brine
from beneath the lake and transform the Imperial Valley into
​“Lithium Valley.” Except, the technology to mine the lithium
safely and efficiently has not been proven, and some residents worry
their communities, already suffering environmental destruction and
institutional neglect, could become a sacrifice zone for the dirty
part of green energy.

The Salton Sea exists because of industrial meddling with the
watershed in the past. More than 100 years ago, the _Imperial Valley
Press,_ declared the region ​“the most fertile body of arid land
on the continent,” and new settlers began parceling off acres for
farming and creating a system of irrigation to bring their vision to
life. The lake was created by accident in 1905 when floods broke
a head gate on this irrigation canal and diverted part of the
Colorado River into the basin. Later, Frank Sinatra vacationed there.
Before and after that, the Salton Sea served as a military test
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Over time, the flooded valley became increasingly salty, hot and
besieged with agricultural run-off and algae blooms, which killed off
fish and migratory birds. Evaporation continues to concentrate this
toxic cocktail and stands to steal three-quarters of the sea’s
current volume by 2030, intensifying the wind-blown air pollution.

Now, the Salton Sea is thought to hold one of the largest reserves of
lithium in the world. If the mineral can be extracted, this region,
120 miles east of San Diego, could supply more than
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a third of the world’s current demand. Three
companies — Berkshire Hathaway Renewables, Controlled Thermal
Resources and EnergySource — are racing for the chance to mine
the increasingly valuable material from the sea’s brine.

The demand for lithium is being driven in part by the Inflation
Reduction Act, which aims to create a domestic battery supply chain.
The Biden administration set a goal to make half of all new vehicles
zero-emissions by 2030 and has invoked
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the Defense Production Act to secure U.S. production of the needed
minerals, including lithium. 

“We need to end our long-term reliance on China and other countries
for inputs that will power the future,” President Joe Biden said at
a March press conference
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The Inflation Reduction Act subsidizes the goal with a $7,500 tax
credit for electric vehicle buyers, but Sen. Joe Manchin
(D​-​W​.Va.) made sure these credits can only be applied if the
vehicle batteries use minerals from the United States
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(or a country with a U.S. free trade agreement). 

Currently, however, the United States mines only 1%
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of the world’s lithium, from one mine in Western Nevada. Meeting the
administration’s goals depends on expanding domestic lithium.

While lithium is considered crucial for a worldwide green-energy
transition, that doesn’t mean the mining process itself is
​“green” or sustainable. In Chile’s salt flats, where nearly
a quarter of the global lithium supply is extracted, companies use
a method called evaporative brine mining. The method involves pumping
mineral-rich water into ponds, where evaporation increases the
concentration of lithium. The process uses immense amounts of scarce
groundwater and can contaminate local water basins. Chile remains
governed by Pinochet-era rules, which privatized minerals and water
and have allowed
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mining companies in Salar de Atacama to consume 65% of the region’s
water supply [[link removed]].

Indigenous groups, such as the Lickan Antay, consider water and brine
to be sacred. In 2019
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after a Chilean economic development agency encouraged the Sociedad
Quimica y Minera de Chile to triple its lithium extraction,
Indigenous protestors blocked access to the plants.

 
Aerial view of brine ponds in Chile where lithium is mined. MARTIN
BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images

 
Nearly a quarter of the world's lithium supply is extracted from
Chile's salt flats. The process can contaminate local water basins.
John Moore/Getty Image

Bringing this industry home presents similar issues. In the United
States, 79% of lithium
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deposits are within 35 miles of Native American reservations and
tribal lands. At Thacker Pass, Nev. — site of a proposed
hard-rock lithium mine — members of the local Fort McDermitt
Paiute and Shoshone Tribe have opposed the project, which they claim
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sits atop ancestral remains of tens of Northern Paiute that the U.S.
government massacred there in 1865. The mining company, Lithium
Americas Corp., recently entered into
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a community benefits agreement with the tribe, but some members
continue to push back. Member Shelley Harjo put it this way in an
op-ed
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​“Are we willing to sacrifice sacred sites, health and internal
balance for short term economic gains?”

In the Salton Sea area, nine different Native tribes occupied the
basin, including the acres now submerged by water, for thousands of
years. Today, the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian reservation
sits just north of the geothermal plants where lithium is already
being extracted. In addition to lithium, the brine beneath the Salton
Sea contains hazardous elements — including arsenic, barium and
lead — that some fear could contaminate the broader environment.
At an online meeting of the Lithium Valley Commission, Faron
Owl — a member of the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe, whose reservation
lies to the southeast of the Salton Sea — raised concerns about
the mining plans. ​“Toxic wastes, the gas emissions, the
pollution, are being put aside for the lithium demand,” he said,
while the state and federal governments ignore the ​“underlying
concerns of land, air, and water.”

The three companies vying to massively expand lithium mining at the
Salton Sea claim they will use a new process called direct lithium
extraction (DLE), by which lithium is drawn from
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underground brine using filters, beads, solvents or sorbents.
Proponents of DLE say it saves time and money and is less
environmentally damaging than evaporation brine mining. Ten years ago,
Simbol Materials built the first demonstration plant at the site, but
it folded after a failed acquisition by Tesla
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recently, a company called Lilac Solutions—aided by millions of
dollars
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from Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates — tried its
hand at DLE in the Salton Sea. This August, the company deemed
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the hot, toxic brine too difficult to handle for both equipment and
workers, calling the region a ​“graveyard for
lithium extraction.” 

To this day, DLE technology has not been proven at scale.

“Maybe it is a lesser evil, but we need to know the negative
impacts,” says Mariela Loera, of nearby Coachella. As policy
advocate for the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability,
Loera has listened to residents’ concerns about lithium mining since
before the official meetings of the Lithium Valley Commission. She
says community members are worried about the environmental impacts of
a lithium boom, such as air pollution, waste streams and water usage,
and they want a public health assessment to guide
mitigation efforts. 

Adriana Torres Ceja, a former resident of the Salton Sea community of
North Shore and a Leadership Council intern, is skeptical of the
​“promises for going green” from the industry. She says this
vision feels in tension with the current reality in some local
fence-line communities that lack clean drinking water and stable
electricity: ​“Why don’t we fix those problems first before
creating new ones?” She adds, ​“It doesn’t seem like the
climate is the number one thing on [the companies’] mind. To me, it
sounds like it’s business profits.”

For its part, the Lithium Valley Commission, a 14-person body tasked
with analyzing the impacts of mining lithium and taking public
comment, has put forth 44 initial recommendations, most of which urge
the state to fund environmental oversight. The report also mentions
incorporating reuse and recycling of materials, as it’s possible to
recover lithium and other critical minerals at rates above 90%, thus
reducing the drive for more extraction.

Even if DLE technology works as promised, Reuters reports the plant
owned by Controlled Thermal Resources would use 10 tons of water
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for every ton of lithium produced. Some residents worry this water use
could accelerate the sea’s decline. Asked about these concerns,
Katherine Burnworth, mayor pro tem of the nearby city of Imperial and
an ​“environmental scientist by day,” claims that geothermal
plants generate water from the leftover condensate that goes into
their cooling towers. Additionally, she says, upgrades the plants have
made to local irrigation systems have helped conserve water that
otherwise would have been lost to evaporation. 

Abandoned nests of a bird rookery on the shore of the receding Salton
Sea near Calipatria, California. David McNew/Getty Images

Burnworth sees expanded lithium mining as a much-needed economic
engine for the area. The Imperial Valley, where the population is 82%
Latino, suffers from an unemployment rate four times
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greater than the rest of the state. ​“We will do whatever we can
to support industry,” she says. But the valley has weathered a boom
and bust of green energy investment before. ​“When the solar
industry came, it created temporary jobs and it took a lot of
farmland out of production,” she says. The construction jobs that
built power plants and solar farms failed to stick around. ​“Our
communities are adamant that the same mistake doesn’t
happen again.”

As the expansion of lithium mining in the area becomes more likely,
many residents have shifted from resistance against extraction to
agitating for community benefits. Luis Olmedo, of the community health
and environmental justice organization Comite Civico del Valle
(“Civic Committee of the Valley”), wants to see the industry’s
promises — about jobs, environmental impacts and profit
sharing — backed by enforceable documents. ​“These are
public dollars, public minerals in the public domain,” he says.
​“We want to make sure that they’re not interpreted as just
corporate welfare.”

He hopes the revenues reaped from lithium mining can be used for
much-needed infrastructure improvements, such as hospitals and
community centers, or even to buy back water rights for residents.
Part of this, Olmedo says, can be accomplished through the kind of
legally binding community benefit agreements suggested by the Lithium
Valley Commission, and through California’s new lithium tax
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was fought by
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Controlled Thermal Resources and EnergySource, but approved by Gov.
Gavin Newsom in June.

Despite the challenges, Olmedo says the Salton Sea community hopes to
be part of a just transition. ​“We’ve been left behind,” he
says. ​“And now we’re being seen as the solution.” 

Paige Oamek [[link removed]] is
a fact-checker and editorial intern at _The Nation_. Their writing
appears in _In These Times_, _The American Prospect_ and elsewhere.

Reprinted with permission from _In These Times_
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