The US has enormous deposits of critical minerals like lithium right here at home. So why are we looking at mining the ocean floor and asteroids? This episode was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team. It was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. A lithium recovery demonstration plant at the Salton Sea. Photo by Darco Productions. Help us plan for the future of Today, Explained by filling out a brief survey: voxmedia.com/survey. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are critical minerals and why are they important?
We call them critical minerals because they're critical. A handful of elements that we need for modern technologies.
Whoever controls the production and processing of these critical minerals will control the 21st century economy the way that control of petroleum defined the 20th century economy.
China controls 90% of these minerals, and this worries the U.S.
because... The girls are fighting! Why? Why?
So the U.S. needs to find them stat. Some of the places we're looking are uneasy about the attention.
They want to make sure it's not done at the expense of a community that can't afford it.
Some, like the ocean, are as yet unexplored, and some asteroids are on the bleeding edge of what we can even imagine. Coming up on Today Explained, Minecraft. Support for today's show comes from BetterHelp. June is Men's Mental Health Month. And according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, six million men in the U.S.
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Chapter 2: Why is the U.S. concerned about mineral production?
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This is Today Explained.
All right, so go ahead and give me your full name and tell me who you are.
I'm Avishai Artsy. I'm a senior producer on Today Explained.
Indeed you are. Okay, so we've established, Avishai, that the United States really wants critical minerals, really believes it needs critical minerals. And in fact, it's trying to find them in this very big country we call home.
We believe it's possible to extract enormous amounts of critical minerals and rare earths, which you know we need for technology and high technology in the process.
You went to a place where they're making an effort. Where'd you go?
Yeah, I went to a place called the Salton Sea. It's in the desert in Southern California, just north of the border with Mexico, and the area between the Salton Sea and the border is called Imperial Valley.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Salton Sea for lithium extraction?
Yeah, it's kind of a wild place. Here's how Manuel Pastor describes it. He's a professor at the University of Southern California, and he co-authored a book about the lithium that is in Imperial Valley.
Imperial Valley has been a place of scams, schemes, and scoundrels from its earliest days. It was a real estate company that wanted to create a place of agricultural abundance that renamed it the Imperial Valley.
In 1901, there was a company that tapped into the Colorado River to irrigate the farmlands, and the US government stopped them. So they went to Mexico and made a deal with the dictator there to funnel water from the Colorado River south of the border.
But they did a bad job. The canal broke, and they couldn't fix it. For two years, it kept on flooding. And the Salton Sea is the result of that accident.
So that's how the Salton Sea was created. Irrigation water continued to fill the Salton Sea, and it took a big turn in the 1950s and 60s.
Here is truly a miracle in the desert. A whole new outlet for the crowded millions in big cities. A Palm Springs with water. Here is where you can find the good life in the sun.
Developers went in. They built resorts and yacht clubs. People were water skiing. The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby all vacationed there. The place was hopping. It was called the American Riviera.
You can enjoy your life more fully, both mentally and physically, at the Salton Riviera.
But then things started to really go downhill for the Salton Sea. Beginning around the 70s and 80s, the agricultural runoff that had been feeding the sea turned the sea toxic. Fish and birds started dying en masse. The sea began to shrink. That exposed sea beds. The wind started kicking up clouds of toxic dust.
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Chapter 4: How is lithium extracted from the Salton Sea?
OK, so this place is really down on its luck. But then they discover lithium there.
In one of California's most neglected and forgotten corners, a new kind of gold rush appears to be brewing.
The Imperial Valley, a region that once had boarded up businesses and many people struggling to find work, may soon see a booming economy thanks to lithium.
A critical mineral that President Trump is genuinely interested in. I am imagining that this is good news for the area, for its economy.
Yeah, things are really starting to look up for the Imperial Valley. And it's not just President Trump that's excited about this. California officials even have a nickname for the area, Lithium Valley. Maybe not as famous as Silicon Valley, but it's a neat bit of marketing. Governor Gavin Newsom even visited.
We see this as one of the greatest economic opportunities of our lifetime. And we want California to dominate in this space.
Local officials are into it. So from the federal government on down, there is a real desire to make this happen. How are you? Nice to meet you.
Rod.
And I met up with a guy who is very excited about making this happen.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does the lithium project face?
So CTR is Controlled Thermal Resources, one of three companies that are looking to develop the lithium potential around the Salton Sea. I met up with him on a windy day on a bluff overlooking the Salton Sea, where he pointed out the site for the project that his company is trying to build, and it's called Hell's Kitchen.
that land that runs across to see that island or that little volcano across there. And you'll see there's about three and a half thousand acres where those wells are. So it's just a blank canvas. We'll run a central road in and build out facilities as we develop.
Why is he not yet doing it?
Yeah, so first his company has to build a way to get the lithium out of the ground. So as we established, lithium is in the brine, which is the salty water underneath the ground. They need to drill down over a mile deep to get to it. And because it's so deep, the brine is very hot. It's being heated by the Earth's core.
But what's cool about this is that a mining company could use that heat to power the process of bringing the brine up to the surface and then separating the lithium out from the salt water. And then after they have the lithium, they can just put the brine back in the ground.
The process would be much more environmentally friendly than the other ways that we currently get lithium, like hard rock mining, which is just blasting a huge hole in the ground, or giant evaporation ponds that waste a lot of water. And the potential payoff would be huge. This would potentially generate enough lithium to power 375 million electric car batteries.
Man, except they don't have the infrastructure yet. Is that really the only thing standing in the way? If Rod is able to build a way to get the lithium out of the ground, then we're good to go?
Well, yeah, part of it is infrastructure. The U.S. just doesn't have the kind of mining, refining, or production of critical minerals infrastructure that, say, China has. And so that's something that needs to be developed. But one of the main things that's held this project back is local opposition. Huh.
We've already had to pay the bill for bad decisions that have already occurred in our area, where companies come in, they leave a legacy of contamination, and who pays for it? The low-income, disadvantaged community.
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Chapter 6: How can lithium extraction impact local communities?
I'm a second-generation organizer. I didn't necessarily plan to be here. I guess just life changed. creates opportunities and it just became my calling.
And he told me about how there's been a lot of companies who've swooped into the Imperial Valley, made big promises of economic development and jobs and bringing a new industry. Like a few years back, farmers gave up valuable land to solar companies that promised lots of good jobs.
The benefit, aside from renewable energy, is that we generate jobs.
bringing over 1,300 jobs to their construction industry here in Imperial County.
And most of those turned out to be short-term jobs, just installing the solar panels. And then those jobs quickly went away and people felt tricked.
Many residents argued solar was depriving agricultural workers of their jobs and taking more work away than it was creating.
Promises were made, yes, but they were not true. They didn't come to fruition.
So all of these scenarios have already played out, so... And why are we going to continue to repeat the same history and entertain the same old playbook?
So Luis's group sued to stop the project, or at least to slow it down. They joined another group called Earthworks. And they've listed a bunch of concerns, water usage, air quality. And they said that Indigenous groups weren't adequately consulted.
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Chapter 7: What is the future outlook for lithium in the Imperial Valley?
Yeah, Rod says that the lawsuit has slowed the project down by a year or more.
We're a small private company, so raising capital has been a challenge. That challenge got exoperated by a ridiculous, frivolous lawsuit that got filed and, you know, we got thrown out. But that put us back 12 months. For what? You know, for what reason?
Now, a Superior Court judge did throw out the activist lawsuit earlier this year. They're now appealing that decision. But meanwhile, the company is looking to start construction on the geothermal power and lithium extraction plant. You know, they have customers waiting for this lithium. They've already made purchase agreements with auto manufacturers like GM and Stellantis.
That's how we mitigate price volatility and things like that. We have good relationships with General Motors and Stellantis on long-term take-or-pay contracts. So they're relying on us to step up and deliver.
So now Rod says the goal is to start generating geothermal energy by the end of 2026 and start extracting lithium in 2027. But this is just the latest version of Delay. I met up with a guy named Ryan Kelly. He's on the board of supervisors for Imperial County. We met up at his house and we drove to the Salton Sea in his pickup truck and he gave me a tour.
I do like the valley and it's a very... good community you're not pressed by having a lot of people around you and you have all of this open space dunes and desert and scrubland hills mountains the river there's a lot of beautiful things about this area.
Ryan Kelly went away to college and then came back. He worked as a firefighter and an EMT. He was also mayor of his hometown, and he's been trying to get lithium extraction off the ground for well over a decade. Wow.
I am committed to trying to see the change that can happen here because we do have an abundance of resources that can be significant for the United States domestic supply of critical minerals with renewable power.
So you've been a supervisor since 2012 and I think you've been working on lithium that whole time. Is it frustrating that it's taking this long and we're still not seeing active lithium mining here?
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from past resource extraction efforts?
All right. So Ryan has actually been trying to get this done since before Donald Trump was president, since before Donald Trump was even a politician. And here we are. We've got a president that really wants to get this kind of thing done. And it doesn't seem like it's any closer to becoming a reality.
What do you think this drama playing out in the Salton Sea tells us about trying to get critical minerals in other places in the United States? Does it tell us anything?
Yeah, it tells us that it's a lot harder than you would think to get critical minerals out of the ground. Even if you have the technology there, there are other things that get in the way. In other places like Nevada and Arizona, there are similar projects that have been held up by lawsuits from environmental activists and indigenous tribes who don't want to see this happening in their backyard.
Ongoing debate over lithium mining in Nevada has taken a personal turn for six individuals sued by Lithium Americas for the peaceful protest of Thacker Pass.
Blowing up a mountain for coal mining is wrong. I think blowing up a mountain for lithium mining is just as wrong.
You destroy the land to build cars, basically. How green is that? They don't want to see their areas become what they're calling sacrifice zones. They accuse these mining companies of what's called green extractivism, exploiting resources and perhaps harming the environment under the banner of fighting climate change. And so that creates an interesting tension, right?
I mean, in China, they can build mines wherever they want. Here in the US, there are lots of state and federal regulations that make mining projects hard to launch. And you have local groups who are trying to protect their own interests.
So this comes down to how do we meet the critical mineral needs of the future, but in a way that respects the people and the environment that are directly impacted by producing and processing these minerals? It's a tricky balance to strike.
Yeah, it sounds like it. Avishai, thanks so much.
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