Chasing the American Dream in Lithium Valley

(LOS ANGELES, Calif.) - A few years ago, on a road trip to the Salton Sea and the town of Brawley, Calif., I made photographs there of the bright sun, the hazy skies, faded signs, and general ‘60s milieu that reminded me of my childhood.

Some parts of town had a vaguely uninhabited look, boarded buildings sucking the life out of the place.

The Salton Sea qualifies as an environmental disaster area. Dead fish piled high on the shorelines whisper to the breeze, “all is not well.”

The Salton Sea drains the fields of Imperial County, fields laden with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers, mostly hydrocarbon based, and some, carcinogenic.

It is the sediment, saturated with chemical residue, that blows in the wind, making people sick.

It was a few years and many realizations later that Imperial County began to embrace a would be savior. Lithium extraction had come to town.

Exclusive Interview with Luis Olmedo, Comite Civico Del Valle

Luis Olmedo: My name is Luis Olmedo and I am the Executive Director of Comite Civico Del Valle. We’re an organization based in the Imperial County.

Robert Lundahl: Well, let me ask you a question about Imperial County. As we were talking earlier, the Salton Sea has numerous issues with agricultural pesticides running into it, and other chemicals as well.

As the water has evaporated over the years, the sand and sediment that contains all those chemicals blows and becomes airborne so that was the cause of a lot of problems.

Can you describe the way things were a few years ago, how you guys were looking at things and how you prioritized the needs of the community?

Luis Olmedo: As an organization we consider ourselves an environmental justice organization– so we see it from that lens as well as the fact that we're an organization that was founded by Farm Workers in the Imperial Valley.

This has been our home for the last 35 years. I've been with the organization for 23 years, so I grew up in Imperial Valley.

I've seen the Imperial Valley from being out with my parents working the fields, and I would say just kind of going through life and the years, a lot of times we can be very involved in our own day-to-day and not necessarily seeing air pollution or toxics where we live and the conditions we live in. A lot of times we ignore all of that.

As someone who's lived here, when I came into Comite– this was around 2000, my whole world changed. Everything that was part of the landscape, that was normal, suddenly was no longer normal.

And so some of the early things that I got involved with were around the things that, that we, as the blinders went off, you're like, “Oh I didn't realize that agricultural burning was a big deal, we see it all the time, we smell it all the time.”

And it was actually people from, good friends from State Departments of Public Health or the Cal EPA or the US EPA, you know, as our network was already there. When I got here a lot of them started kind of pointing out things that I was unaware of.

Burning Season

And I just looked back and I was like, "It's ag burning, what are you talking about?"

Oh, but they were so alarmed and it was a real reality check for me when I saw their faces and their reaction to it. We realized how much we've normalized it.

Since then, as we took a deeper dive into our environment, we realized we don't have the best water quality, we're living next to contaminated and sometimes even superfund sites that we didn't even know were in our own neighborhood.

Air pollution, again, became a part of our language, our mission, and we got so involved that we started going out there and connecting to others.

We weren't born with the knowledge, we import a lot of knowledge too because there's other communities that have done this already.

So we in environmental justice, we try to exchange ideas and best practices. We started going out there measuring the air and we started measuring the trucks, how many trucks, how many axles.

And we started measuring different parts of the community like, which is the cleaner community? Which is the most impacted community?

We started getting into understanding the Clean Air Act, and we got it to a point where we realized that as we kept persistently failing to meet federal standards, these are protections that we as residents, citizens, people who live in this community, we have those protections. In 2010, we actually had to file a lawsuit against the federal government because they were failing to enforce and afford those protections.

I've been here 23 years and we've been able to build a good team that has brought that expertise and who are working either within our own organization or working contracted, and so we've really built a huge arsenal of expertise to what it is today.

And so just as we have that history of having to learn over these years, we also have the history of how poor development has happened.

Anytime we circumvent the law, or elected officials try to cut deals because their metric is jobs, their metric is taxes– well, our metric is holistic.

We want to make sure we have good jobs. We want to make sure we have community benefits, and in those jobs we want labor agreements, we want to make sure that in scenarios as opportunities open up, like they are right now with lithium and energy, those minerals are public patrimony.

Profit Share

We want to be able to heal all the bad transactions that have happened historically, and we want to diversify our economy so we're not subservient to one industry that then controls our policies, our politics, pretty much our livelihood to such a degree.

No one should have that kind of power. And so right now is a very critical moment to be able to diversify our economy, to create a better path forward. A hundred years of agriculture, I appreciate them.

I love agriculture– there's nothing to do with that, but we cannot be dependent on one single industry. We need to be able to create other economies here, within our own agriculture economy and not necessarily compete with one another. We have room for more.

Robert Lundahl: Can we jump forward to the Lithium Valley commission? I know that you're serving on that with other representatives. Can you give me a little snapshot of what that commission is and does and who's participating in that?

We were able to have an opportunity for this commission to carry out a mission, which is to put a report of how this industry could successfully move forward, establish itself, and which would address many aspects, you know, from the socioeconomics, the environmental, being able to extract these minerals in a sustainable way. We had a very diverse group of Commissioners and the goal of the commission was met, which is to produce a report.

We submitted that report, and you know this in December, I think in November, December of 2022, so since then the commission has already been sort of sunseted and retired.

We made that choice. There's a lot of moving parts to establishing this industry from the manufacturing to the extraction, to the environmental, jobs, there's just so many different... and we as commissioners, I think we all had different reasons.

We felt that retiring it was the best option. I can tell you what, and I don't share this much but I'm happy to say as to what my reasons were, I felt that there just wasn't enough representation from the fence–line community.

We want to make sure that there was a strong prominent voice from this community and the commission didn't provide that.

I'm very concerned that everybody's looking out for their interests that they represent and those interests were very large and expansive in many directions there were many visions.

We want to make sure that we don't repeat the history of other mining towns that have been–that have had sort of a very short lifespan. There's a lot of extraction, a lot of harm, a lot of benefit, but then the legacy of harm stays behind, and then when that industry is gone these towns die.

We want to make sure that we have more say, more participation in the visioning, in the structure at all levels from the economics, the jobs, the community benefits, and the profit sharing, the taxes, and the way that they get distributed. We have an opportunity of a lifetime here.

A lot of times when environmental justice is discussed there's always this feeling of, “oh you know they're here to kill projects,” and that is the wrong characterization of environmental justice.

Our goal is to be able to create and to be able to facilitate, to the extent that we can, a well-balanced economy, a sustainable economy. We don't want too much in any direction.

We want to make sure that all parties and all stakeholders are represented, because environmental justice means economic justice. It means jobs justice.

It means community benefits justice, all these things that, and let me compare it in this way, everything that is good for well-established beautiful communities, and there are many in this country, beautiful communities where they have beautiful landscapes.

They have the best education. They have the best tourist attractions. They have the best jobs. They have everything.

That's the American Dream. And so we shouldn't be then characterized as like, “oh they're anti–this or they're anti–that." No, we're for everything.

We are not for hoarding dollars for one special interest, or eliminating opportunities and assigning harm to disadvantaged, low income, or disengaged communities that have barriers in participation.

We're not going to be okay with that because we wouldn't be okay with that for others who participate and have political influence and access.

A Legacy of Harm

Communities have been harmed that will never be made whole again, and land that will never be used, at least in our lifetime or many lifetimes into the future.

People have a right to drive from one community to another and use our freeways it doesn't mean that they can speed; it doesn't mean they can dump trash on on the side of the road; it doesn't mean they can create a bonfire in the middle of a freeway.

It’s the same thing with these industries. There might be a document that says you have a right to go out and and extract these minerals but there are laws that say otherwise. I'm not even going to go as far as expect people in business to feel like they're human right?

Business is business. They're about the bottom line. I'm not going to say, well you got to have morals, no. There are laws, and as long as you comply to the laws, and if those laws don't go far enough, then we'll go and make sure we put more laws on the books; but at the very minimum you meet all the laws in the book, that's what we're expecting.

We're definitely bringing in more available resources. We're working to be able to hire more experts, scientists, researchers, attorneys, NEPA attorneys, what we call leveling the playing field. Industry has the deep pockets to hire all these experts to look out for its best interest.

Government has their experts. Well now, in this case, in this scenario right now, thanks to philanthropy, thanks to our governor, and thanks to the changing climate locally with our government, they seem to be more in tune with equity and justice.

They are and it's either because they really see that it's in our best interest, or they see the dollar signs attached to these goals, and metrics around equity and justice.

Whatever the case is, we're in a position of power like we've never been before, and my hope is that that we're able to create a better blueprint as to how to extract these minerals because one thing we want and one thing's for certain, we need to reduce greenhouse gases, carbon from our atmosphere, because we are in a self-destructive mode right now.

We want to be part of that solution and one, a major contributor is carbon emissions from vehicles from large freight trucks, trains, to passenger- you know, family-owned vehicles and if we can produce a transition or I will call it a transitional option until we find the technologies where we can take advantage of the wind or water or other minerals that are less harmful to extract...

We know that lithium is perhaps going to be far less destructive than fossil fuel, so that's where we're at right now. We're really trying to do this. If this is the option, we want to make sure that it's done right and I do have to say that this state, in this country, is doing the right thing.

But also assuring that Native tribes have a prominent voice in this conversation because you know, as environmental justice we have partnerships with tribes.

Robert Lundahl: Let's go to the devil in the details. I don't know specifically what all the devils and details are but I kind of have an idea if you point over here you might find some difficulties, so looking at the Lawrence Livermore lab assessment of extraction of lithium from brines, they have said it holds great promise economically and for communities, but the other side of the coin is quote, “many technical challenges remain.”

So basically I know you have these geothermal wells at the south end. You've got 11 of them and they produce water from beneath the Earth's surface, hot water. It comes up through pipes and it provides energy in the current form, and then goes back down in the ground.

So the plan that you have, or the plan that is put in front of you is that the brine comes out of the ground and it goes to a secondary processing facility, or technology where the lithium is extracted. Then the water goes back down in the ground.

So questions that I've seen are, that we don't really know how much lithium we can bring up, is that correct?

Do you look at things like this in your planning, because this is untested technology right? It's never been done so what do we have... a year's worth of lithium, or two years, or five years?

Then if it starts to run thin, do we have a market incentive to say let's drill deeper further, faster, over this fault, this seismic fault?

Can you address those issues and how you look at that in the planning going forward, how you plan to approach those kinds of questions, because these are world-class technology questions right? I mean, Silicon Valley doesn't have the answers, and it's up to you guys ultimately, I think.

Luis Olmedo: Yes, definitely, we have a entire community of researchers who are very eager to get the questions and then go out and seek the funding to go and answer those questions. I think we have to be very diligent how we do this.

We have to make sure that the type of science that is used that is helping to solve those problems and respond to those questions in a way that is usable, and translatable, and implementable.

Studied to Death

We don't want to study this new industry to death. There's a limited pool of dollars, right, and researchers are always going to have the pressures of publish or perish.

We have to be very diligent and make sure that our communities aren't just being mined for information, but that we have a coordinated approach as to what are those questions that we need answers to.

You brought up some of them, you know– how long is this resource there and sustainable, how much quantity, these are questions that I can point to like, one entity that is looking at them that's the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, I know they're working on that. I've seen the University of California Riverside eager to go out and try to answer some of these questions.

Again because very few times we get opportunities in this corner of the of the country, of the state, we want to make sure that, also, our local academic institutions are helping answer some of those questions.

Why? Because it's not going to be the only time we're going to need that type of capacity especially if we're looking to diversify in our economy.

We know that some of these minerals are more difficult to extract. We know that lithium, as far as we've heard from the industry, we've heard from researchers, it is a science, you know.

It's not like you're trying to separate gold or these hard metals from an ore, but it's like you take it from a liquid to a solid and then to a liquid and it's very interesting, but I think a lot of this information, at least from the industry side, much of it is being characterized as "intellectual property". Now that's where we're going to have some trouble I think.

And the reason why is because the communities have a right to be informed. We need to be informed as to what chemicals are being utilized, and what kind of risks are there to release those chemicals into the air, into the water, into our land, that are going to have a harm into our environment, and our entire ecosystem including human health.

I'm very confident that the industry is making lots of progress and some of them are talking about maybe as early as two years that they're being ready to go you know, sort of full-scale market scale production.

Again, I think in some cases we're still trying to convince the federal government where they have the sort of the larger resources to be able to invest in this industry.

I know the state is certainly convinced. You don't have to convince the state because the state wants this. It's really about the federal government and the federal government a lot of times is making decisions not really looking at the opportunity here in our own community.

Waste Streams

One is it's either hazardous, it's below the hazardous level threshold, or sometimes depending on the mixture of minerals you have some toxic minerals.

You have some very toxic minerals and you end up with radioactive material that at times you know they have to push the emergency button and get all the cleanup crews in to handle that hazardous waste.

So with the lithium extraction some of the information we're getting, what some of the experts are telling us is that... if, in an average day, there's like 20 tons of hazardous materials, through the lithium processing 200 tons of material is going to be toxic.

Part of what we're doing is we're advocating and finding ways to create standards that California has, that the United State has, that are managing the waste, cradle to cradle, to the highest extent possible. It would be the dream that 100% would be recyclable.

We have considerable concerns. This is important that we have considerable concerns; one of the reasons is because we are the perfect candidate to end up with the harm.

We're the perfect candidate because we have a community that is considerably more ill in comparison to the rest of the state. We have people with respiratory problems when when COVID hit, per capita, we had the largest amount of death and permanent harm.

We also have large unemployment, poverty, it's just all the worst possible conditions, and so we're the perfect candidate as to where companies can really take advantage.

I would say that even government can take real advantage of us because our expectations are less than let's say you go to Beverly Hills or you go to Palm Springs which is our neighbor to the west Northwest.

I've been out there and they don't even... I've never even seen a fast food place, you know where you drive through.

For that reason we are taking extra precautions to make sure that we don't end up with the harm, and in doing so, we create policies and we hold those policies to the higher standards, so that we end up with the best possible outcome.

WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW:

[Note: Transcript Edited by Bonnie King, Salem-News.com for ease in readability.]