How Drilling for Lithium in the Salton Sea Is Making For a More Sustainable Future

[quaint]

GreenMatters

"The geothermal brine at the Salton Sea is unique in the world," Berkshire Hathaway Energy's VP for Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Jonathan Weisgall told KESQ wistfully, in hopes that Berkshire will be one of the early companies to open a state-funded lithium demonstration facility. "If this is a baseball game, we're still in the first inning, but we're pretty confident we're gonna win this game."

Over the last year, one of California's largest lakes, the Salton Sea, has made headlines for a disheartening reason: due to climate change it's almost entirely dried up, and it's now releasing toxic dust and decayed matter into the air. But now, the famous body of water is making headlines for something positive: energy companies are currently pursuing a long-winded project that involves drilling for something called white gold, according to The Los Angeles Times. But white gold isn't what you think it is.

Drilling for lithium and geothermal energy in the Salton Sea is a big environmental win. Although lithium mining notoriously uses quite a bit of water, and there have been many humanitarian issues involving mining for cobalt (which is needed for lithium batteries) it's far less damaging than fracking. It also promotes the use of electric vehicles, which will hopefully be the only type of car sold in the state by 2035.

Small but important progress.

[Budi]

1. Water levels are already historically low. Waiting to find out how they 'make more water' next!

Roughly 500,000 gallons of water goes into extracting 1 ton of lithium.

To put that into perspective, it takes around 1 tablespoon of lithium to produce 1 cell phone, meaning, 500,000 gallons of water would make 190,000 cell phones.

https://www.tcc.fl.edu › urcPDF
The Earthly Impacts of Extracting Lithium

[mn9driver]

2. I fly over the Salton Sea several times per month.

It’s a long way from being dried up. That being said, it’s a pretty toxic body of water; there is no sign of boating, swimming or fishing on it. I don’t think there is much that can live in it.

[hunter]

3. I used to go fishing for corvina in the Salton Sea with my dad.

https://californiaoutdoors.wordpress.com/2020/02/13/corvina-in-the-salton-sea/

Maintaining the Salton Sea as a rich semi-natural environment with stable shorelines shouldn't be so difficult.

The drying of the Salton Sea isn't really a consequence of climate change. The basin is alternately a lake or a dry lake bed, depending upon how the Colorado River is flowing across its delta.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cahuilla

It was a dry lakebed in 1905 when the poorly constructed headgates of an irrigation canal failed, prematurely diverting the full flow of the Colorado River into the basin. This would have happened eventually anyways, even without human interference.

However we decide to manage the Salton Sea I think birds and other wildlife should take precedence over human utility. If lithium extraction makes the land or sea toxic that's a bad thing.