ABSTRACT

California, as well as the entire United States, has crafted new policy regulations to limit fossil fuel emissions and mitigate climate change. These reforms have incentivized the production of critical materials that support electrified transportation and renewable energy, including lithium: a key component of lithium-ion batteries. Developers have now proposed a new method to produce lithium directly from geothermal brine of the Salton Sea Known Geothermal Resource Area (Alston et al., 2020). Development for lithium extraction is under way, which seeks to transform Imperial Valley into “Lithium Valley,” with hopes that the industry will provide the region with a more promising economy. However, it remains unclear how economic and environmental benefits will be redistributed back to a working-class community that has some of California’s worst rates of air pollution. Lithium resources in Imperial Valley have been presented as a panacea to the problems associated with “green extractivism”, for they are coupled with existing geothermal power plants that purport to make the extraction process close-looped, resulting in less potential water and land usage than conventional brine evaporation or open-pit mining. In the past, industry has moved into Imperial Valley delivering promises of stable paying jobs, housing and workforce development training; however, these promises have been broken time and time again, causing community members to be skeptical of new industries and economic development proposals. Drawing from interviews, document analysis and participant observation, this research contributes to community engagement on the proposed geothermal lithium development. The Lithium Valley project has the potential to transform perceptions of what resource extraction looks like, so long as the local community is given a proper seat at the table.