What is the Salton Sea?
Have you heard of a place called the Salton Sea? It is located in Southern California, Imperial County, near Riverside. Back in 2016 my husband and I spent a thanksgiving dinner here with a couple of friends of ours. Pictures of this place today look like the eerie future of our planet when we talk about global warming; ironically however, it could be a gold mine for future renewable energy projects! A gold mine for lithium!
BUT before we get into all that, I am sure by looking at this picture you have so many questions. Yes, the picture you see here is of the Salton Sea. Crazy, I know! So why did I stay here? Why are there dead fish everywhere? Well, let’s back up a bit, I will tell you an itty bit about the history of this place but I will leave you with some further resources sprinkled throughout the article if you want to read on further. Then, I’ll get into my experience being at this smelly place and how this could be a gold mine that may help our planet!
So first question, is this really from global warming? Well, not entirely…
Back in 1905 the Colorado River flooded, broke a damn and filled a salt basin, creating the Salton Sea. This flooding period was so severe, or beneficial however you look at it, that it continued for about 2 years. All this water ended up creating the biggest lake in California!
Though it was initially estimated that the lake would disappear by the 1920’s, this desert land rich in minerals suddenly became a haven for sport fishing, farmers, and boaters which started in 1907 and continued into the 1950’s. Fish were brought to the lake for sport fishing and the bird popularity grew with many different species. As houses sprung up around the large lake, it competed in popularity with Palm Springs and Yosemite, bringing a handful of celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys. Due to all of this growth, the U.S. government decided to continue to feed water into the lake over these years, preventing it from drying up.
All this prosperity takes a turn in 1961 when “The California Department of Fish and Game predicts the Salton Sea will eventually die because of increasing salinity levels by 1980 or 1990.” Unfortunately, they were right. By 1992, the nation witnesses the first mass die-off of a species due to the salinity of the lake. 150,000 eared grebes, a type of bird, die on the Salton Sea.
From what I could find online, up until 2015 California has continued its effort to try to restore the lake and its habitats. During this 20+ year period, California had put millions of dollars into restoration efforts; however, due to the increasing salinity levels wildlife continue to die. The lake is drying up at its fastest rate ever. Today, the lake is toxic to most fish and birds.
My Salton Sea Experience
2016 was the year I spent Thanksgiving at the Salton Sea with my husband, friend, and her husband. Ha ha, yes, I realize the conflicting segue. Why did we go to a toxic place for Thanksgiving? Well, I was persuaded through promise of adventure.
We brought Boston Market turkey, a honey oven roasted ham, and some sides in preparation for our adventure. Before going, we knew this trip would be different but decided to take our chances without doing much research beforehand. Driving towards the lake, we could smell it before we could see it. It didn’t take long before coming to the conclusion we made a terrible mistake.
While the ham was in the oven, we took one short walk from the lake front property to the front of the lake. We felt and heard the crunch of salt and fish bones under our sneakers on every step. I was surprised to see so many full fish skeletons, telling me not many people walked here, yet the dead fish had been here for some time. I dont know how long it would take a dead fish to become just a skeleton in the desert, but there were a lot. The smell in the hot desert air kept me from going much further. Thank goodness the house had central air!
The picture you see here isn’t sand, it’s fish bones.
Once we got back and could smell the ham cooking, I wasn’t sure if I could still smell the dead fish or if it was just stuck in my nose. Before heading to bed, we decided to leave first thing the next morning. This was an adventure we didn’t want to continue.
Here I am, 6 years later, what I thought would be something I wanted to forget is now an interesting anecdote for an energy article in itty bit Better!
Lithium Mining
Bringing the story back around, let’s discuss lithium. What does lithium have to do with the Salton Sea? How is lithium mined today? What does this mean for the future of the Salton Sea? What does this mean for the future of renewable energy and the United States?
I am no lithium expert, in fact, I didn’t even know what lithium looked like before writing this article, so I am right there with you if you don’t know either. As always, I will include some sources if you’d like to read further but I will give you the overall gist to bring you up to speed.
What is Lithium and how is it mined today?
Lithium is a metal and used in many technologies today, including batteries (i.e. lithium batteries). It is found in several different types of places on earth. Salty deserts are one of them, like the Salton Sea. Today, a majority of the worlds lithium is mined from Australia, Chile, and China, in decreasing order.
Here is an image to help explain how lithium is mined today. First, machinery drills into aquifers where brine is extracted. The brine is poured into shallow basins on ground level where the sun evaporates the water. The minerals that are left after all the liquid is evaporated is dug up and brought to a plant for processing the lithium out.
Lithium miners have stuck with this methods because it is simple to scale this process. Pumping up water and letting it evaporate is a cheap and easy to scale operation; however, there are a number of environmental issues with this process.
Image by
The land reserved for basins, push out wildlife. Water taken from the aquifers are taken from nearby communities. The multiple stages of the process produce further embodied and operational carbon, the very things we are trying to minimize with renewables. I don’t want to minimize these issues by listing them, instead I mean to simplify the understanding of these issues to spread awareness. I welcome you to read more through the links I have provided.
The Future of Lithium & The Salton Sea
In short, there is A LOT of lithium to be mined in the Salton Sea, the question becomes, HOW will it be mined? If our goal is to make our world an itty bit Better then we need to be looking at all of the processes it takes to get there.
While reading about what’s to come, I was excited to learn about the minimized impact, partnering with environmentalists, and strategic approach the companies involved and the State of California are taking to plan the creation of this lithium mine.
The Salton Sea project, A.K.A. “CTR’s Hells Kitchen Lithium”, will be a combination of a power plant and a lithium mine. The companies involved in making this possible are Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR), General Motors (GM), Lilac, and Stellantis. Their combined efforts will result in a closed loop geothermal power plant that extracts battery grade lithium. What does that mean? Well, let’s break it down…
CTR and GM have partnered to build the geothermal power plant. This works by drilled into the ground about 2 miles until the water (or brine) has reached a temperature of 300 Deg F (this is specific to this area). This brine is extracted upward into the plant. The steam is used to run steam engines which generates electricity. Before returning back into the ground, lithium is extracted through a new process.
Lilac has created a specially coated bead that absorbs lithium directly out of a liquid brine mixture. After the heat is used from the brine to generate electricity, the cooled liquid is cascaded over the beads within a large tank, the remaining water is returned into the aquifer. The beads only extract lithium. The lithium within the beads are battery grade and ready to be purchased by battery manufacturers directly from the tanks. Stellantis, which has partnered with a handful of car manufacturers, will be utilizing the mined lithium.
The CTR’s Hells Kitchen Lithium, closed loop geothermal power plant that extracts battery grade lithium will be the first of its kind in the world!
This process, limits water depletion, land exploitation, and carbon emissions created from process equipment and plants.
Lithium and the United States
Today, the United States has very little supply of lithium and is dependent on other countries. If we wish to be energy independent and move toward electrification, then this is a big step in the right direction, to be able to build our own batteries for cars, houses, and power plants.
This project, along with others, has the backing of the Biden-Harris administration. Funding through the Infrastructure Law Investments was announced on December 13, 2021.
Final Thoughts
In short, I am excited to see this project progress. It appears to be a well thought out process that is incorporating many minds to truly limit environmental impact. I realize though, nothing is perfect. It is easy to go down the path of picking apart everything that is wrong with this project. For example, should a plant be built at all? Why not just leave this land alone? What about the materials that it takes to build the plant?
I understand these questions and feel the concern; however, we have to keep the big picture in mind. This plant/mine is more than an itty bit Better than the previous lithium process. Yes, let’s continue to improve recycling processes, improve technology, and reduce waste regardless if this plant exists. If lithium mining is going to increase in the world due to other external factors such as corporate need, political gains, and societal change, then let’s try to do it in the best way we know how.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments or on social media!
Great article, Hannah! Since purchasing our Tesla, which we bought so we would have at least one vehicle that didn’t need gas, I have since learned how intensive lithium mining is and what a waste it is to bring it to the US from other countries. Having a Tesla isn’t low impact as I had first thought. All I was thinking about was how much money we were saving. I’m all for bringing the mining of this resource into the US so we are less reliant on the global supply chain. Thank you for sharing this information!
Hi Tina! You are absolutely right. With so much talk about sustainability, the question always arises, “Are we actually saving? Or, are we just shifting the impact to another source?”. And yes, I can relate to the feeling of guilt while you are saving money, are you hurting something else?
This is the reason I always like to remind others of the overarching goal, reduce the carbon emissions in the atmosphere. By improving the lithium process itself, plus bringing it local, the impact is tremendous! It definitely doesn’t solve all of our problems but it does help us get there an itty bit Better at a time!