Lithium101: Mining the Salton Sea’s ‘white gold’ earns mixed grades

Sara Solorzano felt hopeless more than once. She only recently felt comfortable sharing what it took to work her way out of Imperial Valley.

She went to four high schools, worked a restaurant job, went back to school to become an emergency medical technician while managing a 7-11, only to find out she couldn’t complete her accreditation for reasons she still doesn’t talk about.

Solorzano, who is now a student at UC San Diego and a visceral supporter of education, can quickly list the gaps through which Imperial Valley youth can fall, and the support lacking for them to succeed. And it’s not just too few jobs.

So when word got out that lithium, the world’s hottest green energy commodity, is buried under the Salton Sea in amounts that potentially match the current total estimated global production, Solorzano didn’t see dollar signs and solutions.

She knew it would not be the first time that the Imperial Valley would host an alternative energy business venture.

Sara Solorzano looks ahead at Cuyamaca College in San Diego County on Oct. 22, 2022. Solorzano is an international studies major with an emphasis in sociology at UC San Diego. (Photo by: Philip Salata)

Solar, wind and geothermal have all come into the valley – none have converted promises into an abundance of jobs, let alone addressed the larger inequities locals experience.

Why would it be different this time? The believe-it-when-we-see-it sentiment runs consistently through the towns of Imperial.

But hopes amplified after California devoted $300.6 million to accelerate lithium extraction in the Imperial Valley, with $80 million going to San Diego State University’s Imperial Valley campus for facilities to train workers for jobs at the plants. Companies involved in the venture have also given money to Imperial Valley College to promote new programs. According to the college’s Dean of Economic and Workforce Development, Eraín Silva, the industry is aiming at supplying up to 2500 jobs.

Planning entities, such as the Lithium Valley Commission were set up in response to the fast-growing interest among many public and private parties. Among the stakeholders is Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Renewables (in Imperial known as Cal Energy), which has been in conversation with public education institutions, preparing a pipeline for Imperial Valley students toward lithium-related jobs.

To many this could mean a substantial answer as to how the community might benefit from the new and globally imperative industry.

All this is being set into motion as California banned the production of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, and set a three-year timeline on San Diego State to complete its new campus and program. Under the duress of time, the advent of lithium extraction has ballooned over the future of the Imperial Valley, leaving concerned and skeptical citizens in its wake.

In the name of equity

Imperial County has the highest unemployment rate in California. According to a biannual report from the Imperial County Office of Education, public school enrollment has also been steadily declining since 2017, and was worsened by the pandemic. Many families lacked the resources to support remote digital learning. Over three-quarters of the student body come from low-income families.

In light of this, both the state and stakeholder companies have been forging relationships with SDSU as well as Imperial Valley College in order to build out programs that could connect students with jobs. According to Dean Silva, who has already begun to focus efforts on constructing a building to house IVC’s new one-year certificate programs, the jobs could potentially start at $25 an hour, which he says for Imperial Valley standards is a good wage.

Jim Fisher, a chemistry professor at Imperial Valley College, explains how his new certificate programs fit in to the puzzle of industries in Imperial County on Sept. 24, 2022. (Photo by: Philip Salata)

In step with plans to build out facilities at the SDSU campus in Brawley, the town just south of the CalEnergy plants, the university also hired a new dean to guide the path. Dean Guillermina Gina Núñez-Mchiri is an Imperial Valley native, an SDSU alum, and was driven to the job with a vision for her community in mind.

For her, if managed correctly, the development of the lithium industry in partnership with the university could overturn the long-time disenfranchisement experienced by the Imperial community.

“I’ve learned as an anthropologist, adaptation is critical to survival,” Núñez-Mchiri said. “We don't need to be at each other's throats, but rather, I would argue that because we've been able to communicate and share resources, we're still here. And I think those are valuable lessons from the past that we can take into the future of renewable energy.”

Núñez-Mchiri came back to Imperial after teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she was also the director of Women and Gender Studies, and a strong supporter of social justice issues, including Latinas in STEM fields. Many of the potential lithium-related jobs will be allotted for chemists.

Though women have recently narrowed the gender gap for bachelor’s degree-seeking chemists, the workplace is still staunchly underrepresented.

Núñez-Mchiri ushers in a vision for the future that braids optimism with an awareness of the fraught history of extractive economies. She is aware that there are many global players interested in profiting from lithium in Imperial. Her dissertation focused on the political ecology of the Hatch Valley, a border community in New Mexico, and how communities responded to the challenges posed by environmental, social and border-related issues.

“I think we always have to be mindful of the responsibility we have to local populations,” she said. “The extraction of minerals has created massive inequities in other parts of the world. But we've learned from those cases.”

And with that Núñez-Mchiri brings up what may seem like an irony, but is actually an attitude laced with hope, which is that in extracting responsibly maybe one can avoid the consequences of the past.

As for SDSU Imperial Valley, she finds the investment long overdue.

“This region has one of the highest levels of unemployment in the nation,” she said, “so for me, this is an issue of equity and access. You can't have one of the richest economies in the world, and forget people who exist on the border.”

But for others, equity on those terms doesn’t necessarily add up to the rapid shift SDSU has taken toward funneling money toward the Imperial Valley project, partnering with politicians and stakeholders who sometimes have contradictory records.

Representing Imperial County, San Diego Assemblymember Ben Hueso pushed froward the plan to expedite development in the “lithium valley,” but has also been funded by the fossil fuel industry. In 2021 and 2022 he was one of a handful of oil-funded democrats who voted against environmental and public health legislation that would create a buffer a zone around oil extraction sites to protect residents from pollutants. The laws did not pass.

The same day it was announced that SDSU would be allotted the $80 million for the Imperial campus extension, the California Faculty Union told its members that the contract they negotiated would be decreased. In the meantime, CalState presidents were all given raises ranging from 7-29 percent.

For Scott Kelley, a professor of biological chemistry at the main SDSU campus and a member of the union, these numbers did not balance out with larger inequities he has been tracing. Tuition hikes and rising fees for students, neglected facilities, unmet contract agreements for faculty and severely underpaid adjunct professors, are for Kelley among the issues that make building out a new stadium, let alone disproportionally investing in the lithium boom a not-so-equitable approach.

“How does that filter down to the students?” Kelley said.

Kelley says that for a Hispanic-serving institution, neglecting the main campus amounts to neglecting students.

“Why do they deserve a bad education?” he said. “We have a billion dollars of maintenance, and all they're saying is the state should pay for this. But they end up building more facilities, which are going to need maintenance.”

But the overarching point for Kelley is that he does not see equity truly represented in the rapid expansion of SDSU and its partnering with energy companies looking to make money from what may not really be a long term energy solution. And even the new technologies being developed to extract lithium from brine in geothermal plants still severely lack proof of environmental safety.

Should I stay or should I go?

Senior Student Senator, Jonathan Meraz was clearly used to the frigid air of the Imperial Valley College board room, as he was equally aware that bearing 120 degrees beyond its doors was a marker of being a local.

That didn’t mean that if given the opportunity he wouldn’t make a dash beyond the Salton Sea for fairer weather and the chance to convert his interests in political science and urban planning into a degree at Berkeley. But it also didn’t mean he wouldn’t come back – if there were jobs.

For Meraz, his aspirations to study were a bit of a renaissance. He was never that interested in school, and when COVID hit, his GPA plunged. But the momentum he gained at IVC went counter to what he saw around him as a common narrative.

“Whenever someone says they're gonna go to IVC,” Meraz said, “It's like, oh, you're just gonna crash community college, take a few classes and fail. That tends to be the trend around here, people don't really finish their education.”

Instead, Meraz got “weirdly into public infrastructure” and started to think more critically and imaginatively about his own home. That’s one reason why when talk of lithium in the Salton Sea started to make its way around town, Meraz approached the rumors cautiously.

His grandparents came from Guadalajara and started a watermelon distribution business. His parents carried it on. Growing up, he did his part too. The three generations of the Meraz’s have all watched the waxing and waning of changes in the valley.

But if something was clear for Meraz, it was that higher education could bring him closer to his passion. And that could be a recipe to push against the odds around him. Even though he is keenly aware of what the cost of living is outside of Imperial, the value of experiencing life beyond the valley outweighs any program that could be introduced to entice him to stay.

“It's not a normal escape,” Meraz said. “Say you live in like, Oklahoma, you're going up to Oklahoma City, you'll probably survive. If you go to San Diego or LA or the Bay Area, you need to be like making over $100,000.”

And still, he would go.

A great egret takes off from an irrigation canal adjacent to the geothermal plants in Imperial Valley on Sept. 10, 2022. (Photo by: Philip Salata)

What's missing?

Solorzano ended up going back to fulfill her EMT certification, and though she still had trouble with her record, she landed a job working for the casino in Jamul, California. While she worked that job nights, she went back to school at Cuyamaca community college and eventually transferred to UCSD.

She knows how many hurdles were put in front of her, and so she relishes her time at school. Solorzano also became a Triton Underground Scholar, committing herself to helping formerly incarcerated students pursue education. She also looks back to her days navigating her way through Imperial.

“Look at the rate of people actually completing their high school diploma,” Solorzano said, “let alone going to college and then even universities, right?”

For that reason, Solorzano spouts a laundry list of questions about how the money coming in from California’s tax on lithium should be used.

Why is there a shortage of counselors to guide students toward higher education? Why, in a county hit hard by the drug trade, are there no real rehabilitation programs? How do we support women in the face of domestic abuse and teenage pregnancy?

The department of public health in Imperial concurs.

So for Solorzano, if indeed the lithium boom does take place in this border town, for residents to benefit from something as straightforward as jobs, resources will be needed to build a more stable path toward attaining, and also retaining them.