The jury is still out on whether lithium development at the Salton Sea will help the majority-Latino communities living in California’s second-poorest county.
As the Biden administration tries to rush money out the door for three companies that are trying to develop lithium extraction in Imperial County, local advocates are getting louder in their calls for strong community benefits and dividends. Two groups have already sued the first company to break ground, Controlled Thermal Resources, over what they argue is a flawed environmental review.
We talked with scholar-activist Manuel Pastor, director of the University of Southern California’s Equity Research Institute, and Chris Benner, sociologist and director of the Institute for Social Transformation at the University of California, Santa Cruz, about how they see things going, especially after the election of a president who wants to cut tax breaks for electric vehicles but supports an easier permitting path for extractive industries.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
