Why this matters
Extracting lithium from the vast stores under the Salton Sea could transform the region. With questions about public health impacts and technological challenges, that has yet to happen.
Corban Dillon found the dream job he trained for — only it’s two hours away from his home in El Centro, in the middle of the desert. He has to leave his daughter with his mother five days a week.
That wasn’t his plan.
Dillon was a part of the inaugural class of Imperial Valley College students training for jobs in what was projected to be a booming lithium industry drawing on vast reserves of the critical mineral deep below the Salton Sea.
But the dream of “Lithium Valley” transforming this corner of California has yet to materialize.
“If it’s not for Lithium Valley, I probably will never go back to the valley, which is sad because they’ll lose somebody like myself that could be an asset to any team in so many ways,” Dillon said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom once called the region the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
Geologists estimate that there are more than 4 million metric tons of lithium here, and experts envisioned the region’s geothermal brines could produce up to a third of the world’s demand for the coveted metal used for battery storage and electric vehicles.
When Newsom signed a bill that financed the creation of the blueprint for Lithium Valley in 2022, the value of the mineral deposits was believed to be roughly $320 billion. Today, it’s $80 billion.
On top of the unstable market for lithium, the Trump administration is sending mixed messages, pushing back against California’s goals for electric vehicles while also declaring a national energy emergency that lists lithium as a crucial asset.
Now the nationwide dispute over data centers has heated up in Imperial County, raising fresh questions about its evolution from farmlands to tech hub.
For residents like Dillon, Lithium Valley is a dream deferred.
Others are less concerned with the delay and would rather see the plans proceed equitably and safely than fast.
‘A lot of things can happen’
Companies pursuing commercial lithium extraction projects are facing a slew of challenges, from developing the right technology to the shifting economics to concerns over environmental impacts. All have slowed a process proponents hoped would already be producing results.
Community advocates and environmentalists are also questioning aspects of the county’s plans to turn over 51,000 acres of land on the southeastern shore of the receding sea into a sprawling industrial complex for lithium extraction, battery making and data centers.
There are concerns over air pollution, water use, community benefits and transparency. There’s also a fear that other projects would be permitted by right if the plans are approved.
Critics say the county plans violate the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA.
Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables, Energysource Minerals and Controlled Thermal Resources are three companies with plans for the region, but none have yet to scale up to commercial production. Each has been developing its own method of “direct lithium extraction,” a process of deriving the metal from geothermal brines already used in producing geothermal energy.
Christina Fleming, senior vice president of mineral development at Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables, said that while her company is working diligently and remains excited about the prospects, it had to change its extraction method, which delayed the project.
She understands people’s frustrations and hopes they understand the “nuances and complexity of the project” but added there is a chance the company ends up extracting no lithium at all.
“There are a lot of things that can happen that can set the project behind, or delay it, or change its course altogether,” she said.
BHE, which has the benefit of operating 10 geothermal plants near the Salton Sea, has a leg up on existing infrastructure if it arrives at a scalable process. The company recently applied for a grant that would finance a commercial scale refinery.
Energysource Minerals told inewsource it is committed to carrying out its Project ATLis for lithium extraction but declined an interview request. The company received federal backing last year, but still is not producing on a commercial scale.
Controlled Thermal Resources ran into opposition when two environmental organizations sued Imperial County for greenlighting the company’s project called Hell’s Kitchen. Comite Civico del Valle and Earthworks say the environmental review does not properly account for projected water use and did not properly consult the tribal community. Lawyers for the county and the company are denying the claims.
The company did not grant an interview request and said it would not issue statements on pending litigation.
A judge initially dismissed the lawsuit, but judges in the Fourth District Appellate Court raised questions about the project’s plans for water use.
The county’s lawyer said the issue stemmed from drafting errors, but the judges pushed back.
“I don’t quite read the Imperial Irrigation District as offering any sort of full-throated support for this plan,” Associate Justice Julia Kelety said. “In fact, they quite seriously pushed back at multiple stages and on multiple points, including at one time saying everything needed to be deleted as the statements are all inaccurate.”
Proponents of the extraction projects argue that the Imperial Irrigation District has sufficient water and say that rather than selling it to other municipalities, it could be used to fuel industry locally. But those with concerns about water use often frame the problem within the larger scope of water in the West — the resource is rapidly diminishing, and its future is in question.
Wide-ranging concerns
Meanwhile, Imperial County is trying to fast track industrial projects on the southern end of the Salton Sea through what’s called the Lithium Valley Specific Plan. The concerns are as sprawling as the scope of the project.
A coalition including Los Amigos de la Comunidad, Audubon and Lideres Campesinas en California submitted a letter claiming the report does not sufficiently account for public health impacts from air pollution stemming from the receding Salton Sea which the project would worsen, and that its assessment of water and energy use is vague and unsupported.
Among other concerns are that the document fails to account for cumulative impacts of all the potential projects, to distinguish between exposed playa and wetland habitats and to analyze how the effects of climate change and rising temperatures will be worsened by the plan.
The region already has some of the state’s worst asthma rates as a result of dust storms disturbing contaminants and the cumulative pollution exacerbated by the growing metropolis of neighboring Mexicali south of the border.
“You’re going to have impacts,” said Eric Reyes, director of Los Amigos de la Comunidad. “You can’t move 100 million tons of dirt and not have dust, right? You can’t have thousands of trucks and not have particles and so on. How do we mitigate this?”
Another letter from a coalition including Earthworks, Imperial Valley Equity and Justice and the Center for Biological Diversity shares similar concerns and also zeroes in on other issues, such as inadequate analysis of how the experimental direct lithium extraction method, which is not yet being performed at commercial scale in the region, would impact the environment.
The letter also claims the report on the scope of Lithium Valley does not adequately address the impacts of data centers, an issue that has ignited controversy in the region.
Some residents are worried that data centers will proliferate if the county approves plans for Lithium Valley but companies don’t manage to develop a lithium extraction operation.
“There’s a real concern … that it will become a data center hub only,” Reyes said.
In the communities that lie in the footprint of the project, which are some of the county’s most underserved, one pressing question involves what residents will get and what they will give up.
William Cooper runs a community nonprofit called The Becoming Project out of Calipatria, a city in the north end of the valley, parts of which would be within the project area. He said that ultimately he and his neighbors want to see in writing what specifically the companies and county will offer as benefits so they can hold the county and companies accountable.
“Nobody wants to be held accountable because that might become the new standard, and this is what everybody’s fighting against,” he said.
A game of ‘catch up’
Efrain Silva, the dean of economic and workforce development at Imperial Valley College, and a former mayor of El Centro, used to be “very optimistic” about Lithium Valley.
Now he’s “cautiously optimistic.”
He has worked closely with business leaders over the years to develop a series of programs meant to ensure locals get a chance at landing lithium industry jobs.
Some students have found jobs at geothermal facilities, and some landed internships and part-time gigs with the companies hoping to scale up lithium extraction, others have abandoned the path altogether after graduating from the certification program to face Lithium Valley’s delays.
Seeing that, Silva has reduced the size of the program, from more than 60 to 24 students, and is working with his team to make it more broadly applicable to other types of jobs.
With government support and more than $3 million worth of advanced equipment, he said it’s crucial to sustain the program. With workforce development, he said, it’s better to be ahead of the game than playing catch up.
“We’re gonna continue at a scaled back pace until industry catches up to us,” Silva said.
Wallace Phillips, who graduated with the inaugural cohort in 2024, worked a couple of gigs related to his certification, and also for Energysource Minerals for a time helping with lithium extraction. But he said the work was temporary, and now, a jack of many trades, he is back to working odd jobs.
His friend and classmate Johnny Haywood did not find work and is thinking of becoming a truck driver or leaving California altogether in search of sustainable employment and a liveable wage.
He said many of his classmates are facing similar circumstances.
“All these promises, and it just ain’t nothing been happening,” he said.
The two friends have lived in Imperial Valley their whole lives and say barriers to finding work persist. They said whenever a new industry shows up, promises are followed by disappointment.
The question hovers in the heat of the valley: Will that change?
Fleming, the minerals expert from BHE, said that the industry faces a challenge that can be overcome: “This is some of the most complex brine of any of the lithium sources globally, but it’s also one of the largest resources globally. So, even though we’re challenged with the chemistry of the brine, we have the benefit of a very large resource here if we can be successful.”
But people like Dillon, who left to put his certificate and his ambition to use, can’t afford to wait.
“Do I really want to keep persisting on,” he said, “trying to say that something good is going to happen from Imperial Valley when it’s been decades where nothing has come of it?
“I’m not gonna sit there and continue playing the lottery when you know it’s your last dollar.”
