Dear CalMatters reader,

An Imperial County judge cleared the way for the Hell’s Kitchen project, one of the world’s largest lithium mines, when he recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by civic and environmental groups.

Hell’s Kitchen, in the Salton Sea, promises to unearth a motherlode of lithium, a mineral essential to electric car batteries, cellphones and other electronics. While the court decision is expected to open a floodgate for U.S. lithium production, it has disappointed community organizers who worry the mine will endanger nearby residents.

The nonprofits Comite Civico del Valle and Earthworks argued in their lawsuit that the environmental review for Hell’s Kitchen did not fully address the project’s effects on water supply and air quality, and that the company developing it, Controlled Thermal Resources, didn’t consult with local Native American tribes as required by law. On Jan. 9 Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Jones ruled that Controlled Thermal Resources had met those requirements, freeing it to resume construction.

Opponents said that decision greenlights the project without sufficient environmental protection and community input.

“A just transition to renewable energy requires that we don’t create new sacrifice zones for lithium mining,” Jared Naimark, California mining organizer with Earthworks, said in a statement.

Rodney Colwell, CEO of Controlled Thermal Resources, said he is pleased with the decision and expects to start construction in five to six months. However, the lawsuit set the project back a year or more. 

“We’re happy to get past it, but it has cost us a lot of time and it has put the project at risk,” he said. “We haven't been able to raise capital. We haven’t been able to move forward with development at all.”

Now that it’s back on track, Colwell said the company expects to start generating geothermal energy by the end of 2026 and mining lithium after that.

California leaders are determined to transition the public to electric vehicles over the next decade as part of the state’s battle against climate change. To do that, they’ll need lots of lithium.

That’s where the Salton Sea and Hell’s Kitchen come in. Energy companies are already producing geothermal energy at the site, extracting hot, high-pressure brine to generate electricity. The brine is rich with minerals, including more than 3,400 kilotons of lithium: enough to make over 375 million electric vehicle batteries, according to the Department of Energy. Hell’s Kitchen will remove minerals from the brine and then reinject it into aquifers around the Salton Sea.

State and federal officials are over the moon about the prospect of that much domestic lithium, predicting that what they call “Lithium Valley” could become one of the world’s biggest sources of that “white gold, freeing the U.S. from dependence on other countries for the critical mineral. Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the site in 2023, proclaiming that “Lithium Valley is fast-tracking the world’s clean energy future."

But local organizers and academics raised a red flag, pointing to uncertainty about the extraction process and possible pollution.

“The direct lithium extraction technology that the Hell’s Kitchen Lithium Project plans to deploy has only been tested at a demonstration level, and their Imperial County project would be one of the first commercial plants of this scale in the United States,” said Luis Olmedo, Executive Director for Comite Civico del Valle, in a statement.

“It’s got a lot of unknowns in terms of air quality,” added James Blair, a geography professor at Cal Poly Pomona who published research on the project. “This is already a degraded region, not only from the impacts of agriculture, but also the receding Salton Sea itself.”

Blair told CalMatters the environmental review is fuzzy about how much toxic dust the mine would produce, how much water is needed to dilute the brine and whether the mining process would release harmful substances such as hydrogen sulfide or radon. 

“The Hell's Kitchen project can do much more to mitigate environmental impacts,” particularly on water shortages and drought, he said.

Colwell said those concerns are unfounded and described the lithium extraction process as a “closed-loop system” that won’t generate landfill waste or air pollution.

“It is the cleanest lithium technology on the planet,” he said.

Jones ruled that the company has adequately addressed the project's effects on water supply and couldn’t analyze potential future air quality impact. 

Olmedo said the court ruling doesn’t satisfy the nonprofits’ concerns. They want stronger water conservation measures, better protections for tribal resources and more details about waste generation and water recycling. They’re seeking a legal agreement between the company and Imperial Valley residents to ensure those demands are satisfied.

Olmedo said his organization “will exhaust all available legal and public policy channels, including consideration of appealing the trial decision, to ensure that the residents and environment of the Imperial Valley receive the highest threshold of protection.”

Days after receiving a pardon from President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection, Lake Elsinore resident Derek Kinnison returned from prison to a celebration at 412 Church Temecula Valley, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported. 

Kinnison had been sentenced to two years in prison for conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and obstruction of an official proceeding, and for felony offenses of tampering with documents or proceedings, after he erasinged social-media chats to hide them from a grand jury.

The article described Kinnison’s fellow churchgoers applauding him as a model Christian, while local critics condemneding efforts to portray him as a hero for joining the attacks on the Capitol.

As news reports show U.S. troops staging at the border with Mexico to launch mass deportations and immigration raids in urban areas, Inland Empire residents protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy, or DACA, are waiting to learn their fate, the Redlands Daily Facts reported.

The story cites a Riverside nurse and DACA recipient  describing  her uncertainty: “We’ve never been allowed to feel at home.”

Created under the Obama administration, DACA provides a temporary reprieve, but not permanent legal status, to more than half a million people brought to the U.S. as children without documentation.

Although public opinion has tilted against immigrants, more than two thirds of voters view DACA recipients favorably.  However, Trump pressed to repeal the program in his first term and has supported legal challenges to end DACA.

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Thanks for reading,