Saving the Salton Sea

Apr 18, 2012
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Lots of interesting ideas to fix this area (including desalination plants) even before Sonny Bono was a Congressman out there....so many competing issues, including intensive farming in the desert with water from the Colorado River, Indian Tribe land that is actually underwater, et ct....Perhaps they should just make it a giant solar farm and lock in the toxins
 
Jul 19, 2006
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Lots of interesting ideas to fix this area (including desalination plants) even before Sonny Bono was a Congressman out there....so many competing issues, including intensive farming in the desert with water from the Colorado River, Indian Tribe land that is actually underwater, et ct....Perhaps they should just make it a giant solar farm and lock in the toxins
Please keep this area free of trees.
 

Woke AF

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Jul 29, 2009
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An environmentally friendly lithium mine in the disastrous Salton Sea
It sounds more like the beginning of an apocryphal prophecy, but it appears humanity has discovered a way to extract lithium from below California's thickening pool of toxicity, the Salton Sea, in a manner that will leave things 'cleaner' than when the extraction began.

The Salton Sea is a once dry ancient lake bed accidentally flooded in more recent times by early mistakes and wasteful farming practices. Filled with run-off chemical fertilizers, radioactive waste, and general trash. Briefly used as a resort, now the Sea seems to mostly be a source of toxic dust that blows into nearby communities — and a place to live off the grid.

Autoweek reports:

GM just announced that it became the first investor in a project run by Controlled Thermal Resources. CTR will pump hot, salty water from deep below the Salton Sea and extract the lithium from it, along with clean thermo energy at the same time. Cleaner water goes back into the Salton Sea and the ground beneath it. It's a win-win. You might even add another win in there when you consider the California Energy Commission's estimate that the Salton Sea area could produce 600,000 tons of lithium per year, which is amazing since the entire world's industry produced a mere 85,000 tons of lithium in all of 2019.
"CTR's lithium resource at the Salton Sea in California is one of the largest known lithium brine resources in North America," CTR said in a release. "The integration of direct lithium extraction with renewable geothermal energy offers the highest sustainability credentials available today. CTR's closed-loop, direct lithium extraction process utilizes renewable power and steam—significantly reducing the time to produce battery-grade lithium products and eliminating the need for overseas processing. CTR's operations will have a minimal physical footprint and a near-zero carbon footprint. The brine, after lithium extraction, is returned to the geothermal reservoir deep within the earth."
A source of plentiful and 'clean' lithium would be excellent, but the history of the Salton Sea suggests we'll get some new surprises. Perhaps a gateway to Lemuria.

 
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Mr Doof

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Whenever I look at the Salton Sea from orbit, I can't help but image that I see a giant alluvial delta caused by the Colorado River ending in the Gulf of California.

Over millions of year, the delta pinched off the area to the north (that later would become the Salton Sea), and that area dried out into a salt flat like Death Valley. And it was like this for a while, probably periodically flooding when the Colorado overflowed on its way to to the gulf or a hurricane slid up the gulf, then drying up again.

In the image below, you can see the river in blue and the outline alluvial delta. I should look this up one day to see if I am halfway close to being right.

1626971951063.png
 

PRCD

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Feb 25, 2020
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Whenever I look at the Salton Sea from orbit, I can't help but image that I see a giant alluvial delta caused by the Colorado River ending in the Gulf of California.

Over millions of year, the delta pinched off the area to the north (that later would become the Salton Sea), and that area dried out into a salt flat like Death Valley. And it was like this for a while, probably periodically flooding when the Colorado overflowed on its way to to the gulf or a hurricane slid up the gulf, then drying up again.

In the image below, you can see the river in blue and the outline alluvial delta. I should look this up one day to see if I am halfway close to being right.

View attachment 113364
The Owens lake and river probably fed into it too, but - from what I heard - the Owens valley was drained to provide water for Los Angeles. You can see the dry river bed feeding the Salton sea.
 

Boneroni

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Mar 5, 2012
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Great thread. Makes me think about how much of human life and livelihood is due to geological and weather based happenstance.

And also, how much we can directly influence huge swaths of land in a longitudinal way :cry:
 

npsp

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Dec 30, 2003
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Mr. Doof makes very good observations and is pretty spot on in his break down of this image.

This will not be the first mineral recovery plant built at the Geothermal plants on the North East shore. I worked on a zinc recovery plant out there for Cal Energy years ago and I believe they were looking at recovering nickel at some point. Lithium makes sense as long as there is enough of it in the hot brine they flash to steam for electrical generation.
 
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Mr Doof

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The Owens lake and river probably fed into it too, but - from what I heard - the Owens valley was drained to provide water for Los Angeles. You can see the dry river bed feeding the Salton sea.
I don't know if Owens Lake ever went to the ocean, even millions of years ago. I guess it could have if it filled up Lake Manly (what is now Death Valley). All the faulting in the last 200 million yrs makes it tough to tell for this non-geologist.

It did go to Owens Lake (and then onto China Lake now and again) before it was tapped and diverted to LA.
 

Aruka

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Feb 23, 2010
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i have that vhs tape
it's a good one. my brother probably has it still somewhere. took me a while to find it online. i couldn't remember the name. looks like they have a few others on their youtube channel but I haven't watched them.
 

PRCD

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I don't know if Owens Lake ever went to the ocean, even millions of years ago. I guess it could have if it filled up Lake Manly (what is now Death Valley). All the faulting in the last 200 million yrs makes it tough to tell for this non-geologist.

It did go to Owens Lake (and then onto China Lake now and again) before it was tapped and diverted to LA.
Seems like they've tapped several rivers and watersheds that feed into that delta.