Development of a major lithium project in northern Imperial County is lurching ahead after a county judge threw out a lawsuit that had frozen construction for close to a year.
The planned Hell’s Kitchen Project would be the region’s first operational commercial lithium extraction plant. Situated near the Salton Sea, it aims to collect dissolved particles of the valuable mineral from searing hot water deep below the valley and is being built by the privately-held energy firm Controlled Thermal Resources, or CTR.
The lawsuit that blocked it was brought early last year by two environmental justice groups, Comite Civico del Valle and Earthworks. They accused Imperial County officials of rushing their environmental analysis of the plant and underestimating its future impacts on the region’s water, air and tribal cultural resources.
In January though, Imperial County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Jones rejected those arguments. He said the county had looked at the immediate impacts the plant could have and was not required to speculate about future environmental consequences.
In an interview with KPBS, Controlled Thermal Resources CEO Rod Colwell said they planned to move ahead swiftly. The company hopes to start building the plant as early as June and planned to begin hiring long-term workers for the plant around the same time, Colwell said.
“Last year was definitely a very tough year,” he said. But he said they “feel really good” about the months ahead.
California Energy Commissioner Noemí Gallardo declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit but said the Hell’s Kitchen project was “extremely significant” to the future of the lithium industry.
“CTR has the biggest vision,” she said. “I think that'll be a great indicator if CTR is able to move forward.”
Environmental advocates said they’re disappointed by the ruling but are prepared to keep pushing for stronger safeguards on the emerging industry.
“CCV will exhaust all available legal and public policy channels … to ensure that the residents and environment of the Imperial Valley receive the highest threshold of protection,” said Luis Olmedo, Comite Civico del Valle’s executive director, in a statement.
New momentum for a nascent industry
The ruling has cleared the way an industry that many hope could become a clean energy hub in California and bring new jobs and prosperity to one of the poorest regions in the state.
Lithium is a key element in electric cars and other battery technology. State and federal analyses have found vast amounts of the mineral dissolved deep beneath the Salton Sea — enough to produce hundreds of millions of car batteries by some estimates.
Despite these possibilities, some officials, including Gallardo, have warned that the industry still faces some headwinds in Imperial County. They said local extraction efforts were lagging behind initiatives around other lithium deposits in states like Texas and Washington.
“I want to be very clear with everyone that the Lithium Valley is not a sure thing,” Gallardo told the audience at Comite Civico’s annual environmental justice conference in El Centro in October. “The lithium developers out here must get to commercial scale in order for everything else that we’re envisioning to happen.”
In an interview with KPBS Tuesday, Gallardo said she wanted to be honest about some of the challenges the industry faced, including falling lithium prices and a lack of federal funding. But she’s not counting the industry out.
“I'm still optimistic,” she said. “It may not be as fast as we thought, but I think it will still happen.”
Colwell said the lawsuit had been a significant blow for his company, which is one of three major energy firms developing lithium operations near the Salton Sea. They had originally hoped to begin producing lithium in 2023. Last year though, he said they were forced to lay off several staff and became focused on simply surviving.
But Colwell said the major components for the plant had already been ordered and staged and just needed to be transported to Imperial County.
He said the plant would have a staff of around 220 full-time operators once it was up and running. Their aim, he added, was to begin producing geothermal power next year and lithium in early 2027.
“All I can say is, to the community of the North End, thank you for your patience,” Colwell said, referring to the towns in northern Imperial County closest to the planned extraction zone. “Please hang in with us, and if you have questions, just reach out to me directly.”
Ongoing environmental questions
Environmental justice advocates, however, said they still might appeal the court’s decision.
In a statement, Olmedo maintained that Controlled Thermal Resources should commit to doing more to prevent future environmental damage. He has emphasized repeatedly that Comite Civico supports the potential benefits of the lithium industry but wants to make sure they don’t come at a cost to the region’s health.
“CCV believes the Hell’s Kitchen project can further mitigate its water usage through stronger water conservation measures (and) added protections of tribal resources,” Olmedo said in a statement.
The Imperial Valley is already dealing with several ongoing environmental crises, including extreme heat fueled by climate change, severe air pollution and the vanishing Salton Sea.
Lithium companies have billed their efforts as a more environmentally-friendly way to produce the mineral.
Controlled Thermal Resources and the other two firms in the Valley are racing to perfect a process called “direct lithium extraction”, where they would collect the mineral by pumping lithium-rich brine through a filter. That’s opposed to other more destructive methods, which include massive evaporation ponds or physically digging it out of the ground.
That process would only tap into reserves of geothermal brine deep belowground and would not involve the Salton Sea itself.
But Olmedo and other advocates have pointed out that the lithium plants would demand a certain amount of freshwater. The Imperial Valley’s entire water supply comes from the Colorado River to the east and eventually drains into the Salton Sea.
The combined water needs of those projects could reduce those flows feeding into the sea and cause it to dry up faster, they warn. That could speed up the release of pesticides and other harmful chemicals from the exposed lakebed.
Controlled Thermal Resources has also faced other rebukes for its treatment of the land around the Salton Sea, including from federal authorities.
Late last year, the company was slapped with a consent decree by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after company employees cleared out an agricultural channel near the Salton Sea, draining the water from over 1,000 acres of sensitive wetlands.
In an interview, Colwell dismissed the incident as an accident and said they had swiftly repaired the damage.
An uncertain future under Trump
The future of lithium-dependent industries in the United States, especially the electric vehicle sector, has also become more uncertain with President Donald Trump’s election in November.
The federal government breathed some new energy into the industry in Imperial County during the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Less than a week after the lawsuit over Controlled Thermal Resources’ project was thrown out, Biden’s Department of Energy announced a new $1.36 billion loan to support a different firm also pursuing lithium extraction in the county.
But since Trump took office, the new president has moved swiftly to strip away some of Biden’s actions to support electric vehicle manufacturers and encourage more Americans to consider alternatives to gas-powered cars.
In particular, one of Trump’s executive orders seeks to kill a federal exemption that allows California to end the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 — one of the most ambitious climate goals in the nation.
Still, Colwell said he was optimistic about certain indicators, including the swelling numbers of electric vehicle sales worldwide and the growing numbers of cars being produced by manufacturers like General Motors and Stellantis.
“There's no indication of cutback(s) for supply,” he said.
Gallardo said the state was still waiting to see what approach the Trump administration would take.
She pointed out that having a strong supply of lithium in the U.S. could square with the president’s goal of disentangling the country’s economy from other countries like China.
“I think ‘Lithium Valley’ is an area where we could have a lot of alignment between California and the new administration,” she said.
