Chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ryan Maue shared on Friday that California’s Salton sea could become the world’s top lithium producer.
According to Wikipedia, the Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water that extends into both Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of California. As one of the largest bodies of water in the state, the lake formerly existed as a major resort destination in the area but has since developed into a potential ecological disaster as it continues to shrink every year. But now, the California Energy Commission is estimating that the lake may hold enough lithium to meet all of the United States’ projected future demand.
“Imperial County sits on top of the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium’ but billions $ needed to see major tonnage extracted in ~2 years,” Maue said in a tweet on Friday. “Looks like California’s massive budget surplus may help develop ‘Lithium Valley.'”
In order to extract the lithium, either open-pit mining or evaporation ponds are used, although both of these methods have huge land footprints and are often very water-intensive with contamination and waste, according to CNBC. But three companies at the Salton Sea are working to develop multiple chemical processes to extract lithium in a cleaner way that takes advantage of the lake’s rich geothermal resources.
“The Salton Sea field, fully developed, could well serve over 600,000 tons a year, when the world production is less than 400 [thousand] now,” said Rod Colwell, CEO of CTR, one of the companies developing a new lithium facility, according to CNBC.
In addition to America’s lithium demand, the Salton Sea lithium supply could also provide at least 40% of the global demand, according to CNBC. Should the lithium extraction facilities come to fruition, the new industry could be a major economic boon to the region, where the high rates of unemployment, poverty, and suffering health impact the majority Mexican-American community.
