The Salton Sea & Lithium

In the meantime, investors at the Salton Sea hope their new lithium mine will significantly boost the economy and help restore a lake fouled by toxic runoff from area farms for decades. But the effort has run into some rocky waters. Just a few days after Biden praised the project, Berkshire privately asked the Energy Department to change its grant scope and let it make carbonate instead of hydroxide, according to emails and documents obtained by Reuters. The company was denied, and the request was deemed a substantial deviation from its original proposal and unfair to other applicants.

If the lithium mining venture succeeds, it could set an example of how to mine geothermal energy at scale and help meet the rising global demand for electric vehicles and other green technologies that use lithium-ion batteries. Investors are already betting the technology will become a dominant source of electricity in a few years, replacing coal and natural gas. That prospect draws investors to the Salton Sea, where geothermal water is pumped up from an aquifer more than 4,000 feet below the surface. The brine is rich in hot, mineral-abundant liquids that hold the potential to be mined for lithium, as well as other valuable minerals.

Investors envision self-contained systems that will extract the minerals — including lithium — from the hot liquid pumped up from the earth. Then, the system will lower the water back into the aquifer and recycle the minerals, leaving behind a clean, renewable energy resource.

The process differs from what has been done at many other lithium mines worldwide. At Chile’s biggest mine, miners dig a series of pools in the desert and let the sun evaporate the water, moving from collection to pool as they concentrate. Australia’s open-pit mines use acids to dissolve rock and get at the lithium. The investors at the Salton Sea plan to make the process much more water-efficient, allowing the evaporating brine to feed a geo- thermal power plant that will generate emission-free electricity.

The investors at the Salton Sea also plan to sell some of the electricity they produce on the public grid, which could bolster the local economy and help keep the mining operation solvent. Ultimately, they hope to generate the revenue to restore the lake, a toxic mess since the state drained it in 1931.

As the brine evaporates, people are sickened, and wildlife is losing its habitat. The environmental justice advocate Scott Meyer says it’s a clear sign the area is being treated poorly, and he believes that if the community were white or wealthier, the government would be doing more to fix the problems. “This is an unjust system, and we need to do something about it,” he said. “If they’re going to make money on this, they should be investing some of that back into the communities.” For now, it remains to be seen whether the Salton Sea’s newfound lithium-ion battery fortune will pay off for everyone involved.