It was once a thriving lakeshore; now it's toxic and poisoning residents. Mining lithium might offer a solution.

In the Imperial Valley of southeast California, community members are seeking a solution to the harmful effects of the Salton Sea, reports Jill Johnston and Shohreh Farzan for The Conversation. In addition to emitting a foul smell that permeates neighborhoods, chemical blow-off from the drying lake bed is causing lung problems in children.

Formed in the early 1900s when the Colorado River flooded and breached an irrigation canal, the Salton Sea has been kept afloat by contaminated irrigation runoff from the Imperial Valley's agricultural region, which contains fertilizers, pesticides, salt and toxic metals. What was once a thriving tourist and celebrity attraction in the 1950s is now a toxic, shrinking lake.

“As the lake shrinks, wind blowing across the exposed lake bed kicks up toxic dust left by years of agriculture chemicals and metals washing into the lake,” Johnston and Farzan report. “That dust makes its way into the lungs of the children of the Imperial Valley.” 

Findings show the Imperial Valley children's respiratory health symptoms. (Chart via The Conversation CC, data from Jill Johnston 2024 environmental research, Click to enlarge)

They even found the effects on lung function near the Salton Sea are greater than what studies find in urban California areas by busy roadways.

Their study following 700 elementary school-age children across five northern Imperial Valley cities for several years shows higher rates of air pollution were linked to overall poorer respiratory health and children living closer to the sea had poorer lung function. They also report 1 in 5, or 20% of, children in the Imperial Valley have asthma, which is much higher than the national rate of 5.4-7%.

One solution to the deteriorating quality of life in the Imperial Valley is a well-done lithium extraction facility, community members told Soumya Karlamangla at The New York Times. The Salton Sea sits on top of $500 billion worth of lithium, enough to provide the entire nation’s demand for decades, Karlamangla explains. The U.S. currently imports most of its lithium as it only has one active lithium mine in Nevada.

The Imperial Valley region has crumbling infrastructure and a high unemployment rate. “The lithium companies could collectively create 1,000 construction jobs and 700 permanent operations jobs,” Karlamangla reports.

Residents worry that a lithium extraction will cause the air pollution to worsen and require more use of the community’s depleting fresh water source, especially if not done correctly, Karlamangla reports. Currently, three companies are trying to extract the metal, but lawsuits from environmental groups and broken promises from geothermal and solar industries have slowed the process.

One company expects to commercially extract lithium by 2028, and the California State Legislature authorized a tax on each pound of lithium extracted, giving 80% to Imperial County communities and 20% to the state for Salton Sea restoration efforts, reports Karlamangla.

A huge U.S. lithium mine needed for EV battery production vs. a flower found nowhere else in the world

Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine site (ioneer photo)

Step by step, the Biden administration inches closer to green-lighting ioneer's Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine in Nevada, reports Ernest Scheyder of Reuters. Last week, it "published a key environmental report [which is] the last step needed before approving what would become one of the largest U.S. sources of the electric vehicle battery metal." But some conservationists are adamantly against the mine opening despite its cleaner energy purpose.

Ioneer's path to opening has been ongoing for at least six years while the project was reviewed. "The Bureau of Land Management published a final environmental impact statement, that sets in motion a review period of at least 30 days before a record of decision -- essentially a mine's permit -- can be issued," Scheyder explains. "BLM also published an opinion on how a rare flower at the mine site can best be protected."

The rare Tiehm's buckwheat flower (CBD photo)

The site is home to Tiehm's buckwheat flower, "which is found nowhere else on the planet and was declared an endangered species in 2022," Scheyder reports. "The Center for Biological Diversity and some other conservation groups thus oppose ioneer's project." Patrick Donnelly of CBD called Tiehm's buckwheat flower a "linchpin of the local ecosystem, harboring a highly diverse pollinator community."

It's hoped the mine's lithium production can help the U.S. combat Chinese metal production. Scheyder writes, "The U.S. Geological Survey has labeled lithium a critical mineral vital for the U.S. economy and national security. The proposed mine, roughly 225 miles north of Las Vegas, contains enough lithium to power roughly 370,000 EVs each year."

New way of storing energy, with underground water columns and compressed air, to be tested in coastal California

Rendering shows surface installations at Hydrostor's planned
compressed-air storage project. (Image from Hydrostar)

Several local governments in California have agreed to "buy power from what would be the world’s largest compressed-air energy storage project," reports Sammy Roth of the Los Angeles Times. "The innovative technology could help California — and other states and nations — transition from planet-warming fossil fuels to renewable energy, without causing blackouts."

Roth explains the process: "The developer, Hydrostor, will drill three shafts thousands of feet below ground, and send down miners to dig out a series of rows and columns. When the project is ready to go in 2028, the underground caverns will have a collective volume equivalent to two football fields about 100 yards high. . . . When electricity is cheap — such as sunny afternoons when California has more solar power than it needs — Hydrostor will use that low-cost energy to push air down into the caverns. . . . When Hydrostor’s customer, Central Coast Community Energy, needs to draw on the stored power — on a cloudy January day, for instance — the company will open a valve and funnel the high-pressure air through a turbine, generating electricity."

Robert Shaw, chief operating officer of CCCE, told Roth, “This new technology is a critical component of that. That’s how we get to 100 percent renewables.” It remains to be proven, but Aaron Marks, a senior analyst at energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, told Roth, "That’s not a strike against the technology.” Also, the project needs a permit from the California Energy Commission, and Defenders of Wildlife says it "could significantly impact several special-status species," including the burrowing owl, desert tortoise, Swainson’s hawk and the Joshua tree," Roth reports. "When asked about environmental concerns, Hydrostor told Roth in an an email that "recent habitat surveys will 'allow for further review by the dedicated agencies,' and that the company 'has a rigorous biological survey program planned for spring and summer 2023.'"

CCCE is "a government-run 'community choice' agency that supplies electricity to 450,000 homes and businesses in five counties, saw advantages to the technology: "Unlike lithium-ion batteries, which degrade over time and must be replaced, compressed air caverns can bank power for decades without loss of efficiency. They can also supply the grid for longer than a four-hour battery. The 200 megawatts under contract to Central Coast — part of Hydrostor’s 500-megawatt project — will provide eight hours of backup power."

As demand for lithium batteries accelerates, so does the race to extract the mineral, from many different places

  Tubes enter a brine evaporation pool for extraction of lithium at an
old mine in SilverPeak, Nevada. (Photo by Bridget Bennett, NPR)

Some lithium mines look more like Caribbean wading pools. However, these briny pools are part of the mining process of extracting lithium from water instead of rock: water is pumped into the earth and then a salty concoction is pumped back to the surface and a lovely blue evaporation pool is formed. Once the pool dries and is reprocessed, lithium can be mined.

Market demand has companies investing in mines, and solid plans have been made to reopen a mine in North Carolina. “Reopening a closed mine, for a multitude of reasons, is an easier lift than launching one from scratch, and soaring prices make projects that were shuttered for economic reasons suddenly more profitable,” reports Camila Domonoske of National Public Radio. “Analysts agree that soaring demand for lithium means new mines will need to be built — which means hard conversations about where to place them and how to build them as responsibly as possible, given the substantial footprint of any mine.” Companies are even searching for lithium in recycling heaps, geothermal power plant brine, and volcanoes.

Electric vehicles use lithium in their massive batteries and as the U.S. curbs its way toward EV acceptance, the demand for lithium will continue to soar. Proposals for new mines are popping up nationwide but are met with conflicting agendas, Domonoske reports: “One proposed site threatens the only habitat of a rare Nevadan wildflower, for example, while another has outraged both indigenous groups and ranchers.”

Rystad Energy analyst Susan Zou told Domonoske, “For the next three to five years, the world will largely be relying on already-operating mines to scale up as fast as they can. Actually, in the past six months, we have been already quite surprised to see how fast those existing projects have responded to the lithium price hikes.”

Among its many positives, lithium shows a path toward less dependence and pollution from fossil fuels. “Lithium-ion batteries are a key part of every feasible path to reducing the climate crisis. Electric vehicles can help reduce the use of gasoline and diesel.” Domonoske says. “Giant batteries can store electricity from wind and solar farms to displace coal and natural gas. The batteries' promise: the quality of life that fossil fuels have provided, minus the fossil fuels themselves. What this means for demand for minerals like lithium is almost hard to comprehend.”

The U.S. lithium market began in Silver Peak, Nevada, site of an old silver mine. “More than 50 years ago, it kicked off a revolution in lithium mining by proving you could extract the mineral from liquid, not just from rock,” Domonoske reports. “For decades it's been the sole domestic producer of lithium in the United States. Now the small mine is in the process of doubling its output, and facing new rivals, as part of a massive global phenomenon that's reshaping multiple industries.”

Companies are betting that the cost of mining lithium will lead to exponential rewards. Kwasi Ampofo, the head of minerals and mining at BloombergNEF, told Domonoske, "There's something interesting about high prices. It incentivizes everything."