NBC 7 - The Salton Sea was once a famed desert oasis. Southern Californians would flock to the Imperial Valley to soak up the sun and spend time with family and friends.
Now it could see renewed prosperity.
“I’m optimistic of the outcome,” UC Riverside Professor Michael McKibben, Ph.D. said.
Companies like Energy Source Minerals are mining lithium under and around the Salton Sea.
Lithium is needed for electric vehicle batteries and other battery-powered products.
“There’s tremendous interest in the brines that are a mile or two beneath the Salton Sea, because they represent a tremendous potential source of lithium that would be domestic and get us off of that reliance on a foreign supply chain,” McKibben said.
Experts predict there is enough lithium in the geothermal field to fuel the U.S.’s domestic lithium demand.