This Toxic, Drying U.S. Lake Could Turn Into the ‘Saudi Arabia of Lithium' | WSJ

The US just seem to keep having every energy they need, before it's finding enough oil and natural gas for Americans, and than now lithium. Geography just keep giving the US everything they need.

the Salton Sea drying up isn’t “fueled by drought”, it’s because it’s not supposed to be there: it was created by an accidental water diversion…

Pretty wild that a region with 3” of annual rainfall has an agricultural industry. No wonder the Colorado river doesn’t make it to the sea.

No one's gonna talk about the fact that the Salton Sea is an accidentally manmade body of water that is not sustained by natural runoff and never will be, regardless of climate change? Maybe the Salton Sea shouldn't be "restored," given that it was created by an irrigation canal construction accident in the first place.

The lithium isn’t actually in the lake, the mineral is in the brine reservoir located beneath the surface (lake or no lake). The geothermal power plants extract the hot brine and use the heat to run the power plants and then inject the brine back into the ground. Sort of a continuous loop. The Salton Sea itself isn’t part of the geothermal power or lithium extraction process. PS — Imperial Valley Water District has the most senior water rights to Colorado River water which is used by industrial sized farm corporations to raise all types of agricultural products. Basically the corporate farmers have exploited cheap farm labor for years. Also why upper Colorado river basin states hate California a lung other reasons. PS2 — Video mixes and matches a hold host of facts and issues and doesn’t produce a clear picture on anything. There are several great stories to tell about this area and this video barely scratches surface in a very confusing way. WSJ has done a shoddy job for some reason.

Amazing, a toxic lake turned energy goldmine! 🌎💡

The USA should’ve been on this years ago

The media and academics have talked for decades about how the Salton Sea drying will release fine toxic dust into the wind that will destroy air quality in SoCal, AZ, Baja Norte. All that talk seemed to just go away when the size of the lithium deposit was discovered, and the Sea contracting became pretty convenient for mining. EDIT: I don't know why some commenters below are having so much trouble understanding what I said here. The Sea contracting uncovers toxic seabed dust but also makes the lithium mining easier.

Love this videos, keep up with great work 😊

Why is the US so lucky. It has all of the world's resources.....oil, gas, gold, diamonds and now lithium

The United States is just so absolutely overpowered man, they have every single energy source ever!

It seems to me that a contingency of allowing corporations to extract the lithium would be that they also must extract the toxic chemicals at the same time. This whole tax idea just screams of grift and corruption.

Non-US companies should not be allowed to own or operate resource extraction companies that operate within the United States.

This is a resource that can tremendously benefit the area where it's located. It's win-win-win as the economic benefits can help clean up the environment, provide vital jobs and supply a raw material with a wildly growing demand around the world!

And what most people don’t realize, is once that battery is made, IF MADE PROPERLY, it can be recycled and reused over and over and over again.

Very informative video 👍

Toxic dust: can’t they just get a giant dust buster? Seriously, toxic dust is a world-wide problem, the formerly large Aral Sea being the worst case.

The lithium is found in brine pools under or near the Salton sea, not the sea itself. They plan to use geothermal energy to bring it up and then filter the lithium from the brine. The brine then gets pumped back underground. All good so far. But that brine will grt more concentrated over time. It's already pretty toxic but it will slowly get more worse. As the video says it's pretty corrosive to machinery. Eventually they will need fresh water to continue extracting lithium. The only sources for that fresh water will be the Colorado River or the Salton. The Colorado river is already completely allocated to farms and communities. The Salton already has high salt concentrations but nowhere near the levels of the underground brine so it will probably be useful for lithium extraction. Of course this will continue to lower the sea level and expose more salt beds to the wind. So far the lithium companies and the state say that they will remediate the Salton but offer absolutely no details on how this will be done and of course what will happen to the toxic waste that the brine will become. More than likely the companies will extract the lithium till it's no longer commercially viable and then leave the clean up to the taxpayers.

Power Metals Company in Canada has discovered very large Lithium and Cesium Deposits in Ontario. Deposits are in Quartz formations which are easier to extract and process.

A farming disaster, turned into ecological nightmare, turned into a green technology opportunity. In every disaster there is an opportunity.