Billion-dollar lithium extraction project in Southern California

NILAND, Calif. - Deep in the Southern California desert, a massive drill rig taps into what could be the energy of the future.

The region's temperature can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and residents live under the threat of toxic dust caused by decades of agricultural runoff depositing chemicals into the Salton Sea, a saltwater lake.

The billion-dollar drilling project promises to not only transform an impoverished region, but also to help the United States gain energy independence, and is a key ingredient for electric vehicle batteries.

Jim Turner, the chief operating officer for Controlled Thermal Resources, said you can bring that brine to the surface. You can use heat to do work because you have a lot of energy in the form of heat. For years, geothermal energy production has been around, but this effort will double dip by extracting lithium from the brine. Much of the lithium used today comes from Australia and South America and is shipped to Asia, where it is refined and used in batteries, which are mostly made in China.

With automakers shifting to electric vehicles, lithium could become the white gold of the future, and extracting it in California could reduce or even eliminate U.S. dependence on Chinese production, Turner and other experts say.

It will be the largest lithium production facility in the U.S., and it may end up being the largest lithium production facility in the world, Turner said.

According to the Imperial Irrigation District, 10 geothermal plants and two other lithium extraction projects are currently operating in the Salton Sea.

The lake formed in 1905 when the Colorado River overflowed and flooded a hot basin known as the Salton Sink, over a two-year period. It thrived as a tourist destination in the 1950s, drawing celebrity visitors, including Frank Sinatra. Although the plan could bring thousands of jobs to the area, which has the highest unemployment rate in the state at 17 percent, some locals want to know more about the plan before they can fully support it.

Ruben Hernandez, who owns the Buckshot Deli and Diner near the extraction site, said he doesn't know much. They say they are going to bring a big plant. Like many, he doesn't understand the extraction process. If it brings prosperity to a region where 22 percent of residents live in poverty, he's all for it.

They need more jobs, Hernandez said. If revenues come to the town, it will be good for the people, but he also worries that the project will cause more pollution.

Hernandez said a lot of people are like, especially the kids and old people, that they get asthma. You know, asthma, allergies, and all that stuff. Michael McKibben, an associate professor emeritus in geology at the University of California, Riverside, said the process is amazingly clean. In Australia and China, they are mainly mining hard rock lithium, so they have to have open pit mines where they blast rock with dynamite, and they have to crush that rock, he said. This method of producing lithium is amazingly clean because the brine has already been brought to the surface. It is already having the steam taken out of it to run turbines and make electricity. The Imperial Irrigation District will collect taxes on the extraction that can be used to invest in the region's water needs.