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Washington—Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla and Representatives Raul Ruiz, Juan Vargas, Grace Napolitano and Jared Huffman (all D-Calif.) today called on the Interior Department, Agriculture Department and Army Corps of Engineers to jointly develop a near-term funding plan to restore wildlife habitat along the Salton Sea and prevent toxic dust from federal land from blowing into the surrounding communities.

“In recent years, water inflows to the Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, have sharply declined as the result of changing agricultural practices and water conservation efforts undertaken to stabilize the water supply security of the Colorado River Basin,” the members wrote. “As the Salton Sea shrinks, toxic elements such as arsenic and selenium are exposed on 8.75 square miles of Federally owned lands. When strong desert winds broadly spread this toxic dust, it disproportionately harms the disadvantaged communities surrounding the lake.”

Full text of the letter is available here and follows:

March 29, 2022

The Honorable Deb Haaland
Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20240

The Honorable Tom Vilsack
Secretary
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20250

The Honorable Michael Connor
Assistant Secretary for Civil Works
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
441 G Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20314

Dear Secretaries Haaland and Vilsack and Assistant Secretary Connor:

We are writing to request that you jointly develop a near-term funding plan to fulfill the U.S. Government’s acknowledged initial landowner responsibility of at least $332.5 million over the next decade to manage the exposed Salton Sea lakebed. We ask that you prepare this near-term funding plan by December 31, 2022 in close coordination with the California Natural Resources Agency and the Salton Sea Authority, which is composed of locally elected leaders, the Torres Martinez Tribe, and major area agricultural districts.

In recent years, water inflows to the Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, have sharply declined as the result of changing agricultural practices and water conservation efforts undertaken to stabilize the water supply security of the Colorado River Basin. As the Salton Sea shrinks, toxic elements such as arsenic and selenium are exposed on 8.75 square miles of Federally owned lands. When strong desert winds broadly spread this toxic dust, it disproportionately harms the disadvantaged communities surrounding the lake. In particular, Imperial County is 85 percent Mexican-American and has among the highest rates of poverty and unemployment in the nation. Approximately 1 in 5 Imperial Valley residents have been diagnosed with asthma, more than double the national average, and pediatric emergency room visits for asthma and respiratory distress in the region (to include Riverside County and Tribal communities) are three times the California average. It is critical for the health and well-being of these communities that we work to mitigate the adverse effects of the receding Salton Sea as quickly as possible.

Congress has urged immediate Federal action to address the government’s landowner responsibility to protect the public health of these disadvantaged communities. The Joint Explanatory Report for the just-enacted Fiscal Year 2022 omnibus appropriations bill directs Reclamation “to provide to the Committees not later than 90 days after enactment of this Act a briefing on Reclamation’s plan for managing the air quality impacts of the estimated 8.75 square miles of lands it owns that will emerge from the receding Sea over the next decade.” In its Fiscal Year 2021 budget request, Interior estimated a $332.5 million near-term cost to manage these lands ($38 million per square mile for the 8.75 square miles in federal ownership), plus $4.5 million annual operations and maintenance cost. Interior’s budget request cautioned that these cost estimates are “extremely conservative.”

Congress has provided your agencies with multiple well-funded programmatic authorities from which a near-term federal Salton Sea funding plan may be derived, including through the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act and various Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation authorities. While we appreciate and strongly support the Corps’ inclusion of $1.5 million in its IIJA workplan to advance a Salton Sea feasibility study to contribute federal funding support for long-term Salton Sea management, we are keenly interested in what near-term funding the Corps could direct to address the United States’ immediate landownership responsibilities.

We note that the Salton Sea funding plan we request will significantly advance the Biden-Harris Administration Executive Order 14008, which provides that 40% of federal infrastructure, energy and related investments should flow to disadvantaged communities like those surrounding the Salton Sea. The United States also bears Tribal trust responsibilities to the Torres Martinez Tribe.

While we believe Congress has provided you with ample direction, authority and funding to address the United States acknowledged near-term Salton Sea obligations, to reduce the public health burdens of the disadvantaged communities surrounding the lake, and to further protect federal interests in the region over the long term, please notify us if additional congressional direction is needed to support this work. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,

 

 

Lithium is required for making electric vehicle batteries and other devices that store and use electricity. As the world transitions away from fossil fuels and electric vehicles become increasingly popular, an acute deficit looms in lithium supply: its price increased by over 400% in 2021. The shortage could put the brakes on many automakers’ plans to create all-electric inventory by 2035.

To help ensure America’s supply, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Office is supporting this new lithium study with $1.14 million. It is being led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in partnership with UCR and Geologica Geothermal Group, Inc.

“We hope that our collaborative research will provide independent, objective scientific data on the origin, extent and sustainability of the extractable lithium that is present in the Salton Sea geothermal brines,” said UCR geochemist Michael McKibben, who has been studying the Salton Sea geothermal field since the 1970s.

“We also seek to identify any environmental issues associated with direct lithium extraction from geothermal brines, even though they appear to pale in comparison to the significant environmental problems associated with traditional open pit and evaporative pond mining of lithium that occurs in the rest of the world,” he said.

“Extraction from the deep hot brines will not have any direct impact on the Sea itself, but the process does require some water use and some chemical reagents,” McKibben said.

Geothermal energy is a clean, renewable form of energy in which hot fluids are produced from deep underground, and the steam from their boiling is then used to generate electricity. Lithium would be extracted from the spent, cooled brine before it is reinjected into the ground.

Currently, most of the world’s lithium is either mined from open pits in China and Australia or extracted from salar deposits — salt lake flats — in South America. These methods run the risk of groundwater contamination, water depletion and air pollution. In addition, these methods aren’t extracting lithium quickly enough to meet demand.

he potential size of the lithium resource below the surface of the Earth near the Salton Sea is staggering. Governor Gavin Newsom recently called California the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” and the state established the Lithium Valley Commission last year to report on the opportunities.

“The Salton Sea geothermal system is the primary potential geothermal resource for lithium in the United States, and it’s a world-class resource,” said Pat Dobson, the Berkeley Lab scientist leading the project. “But there is a wide range of estimates in terms of the size of the resource, and also not a great understanding of where the lithium comes from, the rate at which it would decline over time with extraction of lithium from the geothermal brines, and whether it would be replenished by the remaining lithium in the host rocks.”

It is also not yet clear whether all of the lithium is extractable, or whether there is any risk of inducing an earthquake from expanding geothermal production in the area. The project will address these questions, as well as questions about the efficiency of geothermal extraction.

McKibben and Maryjo Brounce, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, lead the UCR effort in this project. Brounce will use her energy dispersive and laser ablation instrumentation to map out where the lithium is located within the reservoir rocks, and what mineral form it’s in. This characterization will then be used to assess the rate of resupply of lithium to reinjected geothermal fluids.

“We’ll look at how quickly might you expect the resource to be regenerated – is it centuries? Decades?” Brounce said. “Those chemical reaction rates will depend pretty strongly on where in the rock lithium is stored, so it can help create a predictive tool.”

The research team will be assisted with brine data from companies that have already started pilot lithium extraction operations at the Salton Sea.

“We want to use the existing brine data to develop a predictive tool for how much lithium is present in brine as a function of its temperature and salinity, in order to estimate how much lithium is present in those parts of the geothermal field that have not yet been drilled out and explored,” said McKibben.  “So far only about a third of the known thermal resource in the field has been drilled into.”

Ultimately, the researchers hope that in addition to forming the basis for a new domestic battery industry, geothermal lithium extraction could lead to economic growth in Imperial County, which has the lowest per capita income in the state.

“We need to get students in Imperial County and elsewhere to understand that they can have lucrative careers involving green energy near the Salton Sea,” McKibben said. “This is an opportunity to do that.”

Troubled region could become a prime site for a satellite industry: battery manufacturing

People have been fighting Salton Sea shrinkage, salinity and stench for decades without much success. But now the local economy could be headed toward a boom.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to help energy companies tap into a huge underground reserve of lithium that’s in high demand for the big rechargeable batteries needed to power carbon-free automobiles.

“We have what some have described as the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” Newsom told reporters in unveiling his $286-billion state budget proposal, referring to that country’s vast oil reserves.

Newsom proposed $22 billion in new spending on a wide range of climate change projects — actually, $37 billion over six years, including money allocated last year.

“California is leading the world in forging an oil-free future,” the governor said. “We will not sell [new] traditional gas-powered, internal combustion engines by 2035. This is dramatic. It’s profound.

“You can’t get serious about climate change unless you’re serious about tailpipe emissions.”

Newsom is proposing $350 million in tax credits that lithium entrepreneurs can apply for — plus regulatory streamlining to cut the lengthy, frequently agonizing process of obtaining government permits for their projects.

He’s asking for $100 million in tax credits annually for three years to help finance “pre-development” of any kind of clean energy. But this is clearly aimed at aiding the budding lithium industry. The money could be used for things such as engineering, equipment and infrastructure.

California’s largest and most troubled lake has been shrinking and becoming more saline for nearly three generations. Once thriving resorts have been abandoned and it’s no longer a popular vacation destination.

An estimated 97% of its once-abundant fish have died off, most rotting on the beaches. Waterfowl no longer find it a pleasant resting spot on their winter migration, largely because the edible fish have all but vanished.

Created in 1905 by a levee break that allowed Colorado River water to flow into the Imperial Valley, the shallow lake was about 15 miles by 35 miles. But it has been receding as farmers used water more efficiently and there was less irrigation runoff into the lake.

As the lakebed became exposed, desert winds sent clouds of toxic dust into nearby communities — some even reaching the Los Angeles basin. The place had a rotten egg smell.

People have been working on all that but making little progress.

Lithium could at least be an economic salvation, providing hundreds and potentially thousands of good jobs. And, if that happened, perhaps enough resources could be generated to mitigate the lake problems.

“The value of lithium has gone up and up,” says Dee Dee Myers, director of Newsom’s Office of Business and Economic Development. “We need more battery storage. It turns out that this part of California has one of the world’s largest reserves of lithium.”

And if the lithium can be tapped in great quantities, Newsom and energy companies are thinking, the Salton Sea area could become a prime site for a satellite industry: battery manufacturing.

Karen Douglas, a member of the California State Energy Commission, says it’s estimated that within two years, California could produce nearly a third of the global lithium demand.

Australia, Chile, China and Argentina are the major lithium producers now.

“Lithium is obtained from brine.

Extracting it is like drilling for oil. You drill from a derrick a mile or more into the earth and pump out water. The lithium is removed from the brine. Then, around the Salton Sea at least, the water would be injected back into the ground.

“It’s kind of a clean process,” Myers says.

“It’s 75% water and 25% gunk. Solid gunk,” says Jonathan M. Weisgall, vice president for government relations of Berkshire Hathaway Energy. “The challenge is to get the lithium out of the gunk in an environmentally responsible and economically viable manner without getting out the other stuff.”

Weisgall says Berkshire Hathaway is operating two demonstration plants at the Salton Sea and hopes to begin commercial operations in 2026.

“We’re crawling before we’re walking, and we’ll be walking before we’re running,” he says.

His company already has received two government matching grants totaling $26 million — one from the state, another from the feds — and has matched each with its own money.

“We would not be putting in this sort of resources if we did not think there was a high-level prospect of success,” Weisgall says.

This may not be another 20th century oil boom or 19th century gold rush for California. But it may be for people around the Salton Sea.

George Skelton is a Los Angeles Times columnist.

Lithium from geothermal brine could help meet growing demand for raw material and make geothermal power more cost efficient

DOE/IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

 

Electric vehicles are expected to be essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As more of them roll off production lines and onto roads, the world will need two things: more lithium, the key element in the batteries that power them, and carbon-free power to charge those batteries.

Using computational modeling, researchers at Idaho National Laboratory say geothermal power generation may significantly address both challenges.

Annual passenger electric vehicle sales are predicted to more than quadruple by 2025, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Industry experts estimate that lithium demand will rise nearly twentyfold, from 75,000 metric tons in 2020 to 1.41 million metric tons per year by the end of the decade.

In the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Ange-Lionel Toba, an INL systems modeling researcher, and his colleagues Ruby Thuy Nguyen and Ghanashyam Neupane suggest that lithium from U.S. geothermal plants could meet up to 8% of the world’s demand. Extracting lithium from the brine before cycling it back into the ground might also offset geothermal capital costs, making electrical generation from geothermal more cost competitive.

By itself, lithium is a light, chalky powder that must go through a chemical conversion process to become lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide. These compounds are combined with materials such as graphite, silicon, cobalt, nickel and manganese to make cathodes and anodes, which are used in individual battery cells. Thousands of cells may be combined to create a battery pack for an electric vehicle.

Currently, the United States imports most lithium-ion batteries used in vehicles and consumer goods, as well as the lithium for domestic battery manufacturing. With demand expected to skyrocket, policymakers are asking: How much more can be found domestically and what sources can be tapped?

One plentiful source may lie below the earth’s surface in the circulatory systems of geothermal power plants. While producing heat and carbon-free electricity, geothermal plants extract hot, briny water that is loaded with minerals, including lithium.

WHERE DOES TODAY’S LITHIUM COME FROM? 

Mineral companies most commonly get lithium by drilling into mineral-rich brine in lakes on high-altitude salt flats, pumping it into evaporation pools on the surface where it is left for months at a time to dry out. These operations are widespread in South America and China.

Lithium can also be mined, usually from clay deposits. Even though the United States has large reserves, the country today has only one large-scale lithium mine, Silver Peak in Nevada, which first opened in the 1960s and produces roughly 4,500 metric tons a year – less than 2% of the world’s annual supply.

U.S. Department of Energy research has shown that we could get roughly three times that much from a green energy source. As much as 15,000 metric tons per year of lithium carbonate could be recovered from a single geothermal power plant in the California’s Salton Sea area, the most mineral-rich brine source in the U.S. Located about 160 miles southeast of Los Angeles, the area has attracted attention lately from companies such as General Motors and Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables.

HOW DOES GEOTHERMAL ENERGY WORK? 

Geothermal generation requires water or steam at high temperatures – 300° to 700°F – and power plants must be built where geothermal reservoirs are located. A power station pumps hot subsurface brine to make steam that turns turbines to power electrical generators. Once the cycle is completed, the brine goes back into the ground to be reheated. Observing the large concentrations of lithium within, DOE researchers, with support from the Critical Materials Institute, developed an absorbent material to extract lithium.

WHAT’S THE NEW FINDING?

With a viable extraction process available, Toba and his co-authors posed three key research questions:

• What is the economic potential oflithiumextraction from U.S. geothermal resources?
• Is geothermallithiumextraction technology a viable investment in the U.S.?
• What is the potential supply chain impact oflithiumsupply from U.S. geothermal sources?

Using simulation and modeling software, they probed data sets that included county-by-county estimates of U.S. geothermal lithium potential, supply/demand dynamics of lithium extraction and estimates of projected demand in the battery market.

The researchers ran two sets of experiments. One compared the capital costs of a lithium extraction project to the energy capacity of the geothermal plant – in other words: Could the plant sell enough electricity to justify an investment in lithium recovery? The other examined whether the cost of daily operations could be covered, given that both lithium prices and yield would vary over time.

As with almost any commodity, the economic potential is linked closely to supply and demand. Lithium-ion battery prices started dropping in 2014 because of oversupply and improvements in manufacturing. Prices are still low, which has dampened investors’ enthusiasm for any new projects. But with electric vehicle manufacturing on the rise, demand for lithium is expected to rise exponentially.

The results of the team’s simulations showed the benefits could be substantial. “(This) provides not only a viable option to meet demand in the long term but also a reliable source for lithium extraction domestically,” Toba said. “The technology risk is apparent, but the upside is worth exploiting.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Annual sales of passenger electric vehicles are forecast to rise to 10 million in 2025, 28 million in 2030 and 56 million by 2040, according to a 2019 report from the research organization Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The Critical Materials Institute (CMI) is a Department of Energy Innovation Hub led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and supported by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office, which supports early-stage applied research to advance innovation in U.S. manufacturing and promote American economic growth and energy security. CMI seeks to accelerate innovative scientific and technological solutions to develop resilient and secure supply chains for rare-earth metals and other materials critical to the success of clean energy technologies.

About Idaho National Laboratory
Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit www.inl.gov. Follow us on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

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Today, we’re bringing you an episode of a new podcast from Northern California Public Media called Living Downstream. The podcast looks at environmental justice issues around the world, and a couple episodes take place right here in California. Last week, we brought you an episode about air pollution in West Oakland. This time, we’re going to the biggest lake in California, which is now starved of water. We hear how it impacts the health of the people who live around it. We begin with Adriana Torres, who lives in a rural community there, an area called North Shore. We’ll also hear from her classmate Rosa Gonzalez.