Lithium Mining Is Draining the Desert Dry — and Chile's Atacama Is Paying the Price
Two new investigations reveal how the rush for electric car minerals is threatening water supplies in Chile's Atacama Desert and California's Imperial Valley, where residents and farmers fear the boom could leave them with nothing to drink.
The global push for electric cars and renewable energy storage depends on lithium, a critical mineral used in batteries for cars and phones. But extracting it requires enormous amounts of water, and that demand is colliding with some of the driest places on Earth.
In Chile, lithium extraction is creating growing social and environmental problems in the Atacama, a high-altitude desert plateau spanning Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Researchers travel by Jeep through thin, cold air under a piercing sun, past wide basins, steep slopes and the towering Licancabur volcano [1].
The Atacama holds the key to fighting climate change, but getting at that key comes at a cost [1].
The same conflict is playing out thousands of miles away in California. A dusty vacant lot in Calipatria has become a symbol of a growing fight, as investors rush to the arid Imperial Valley to extract lithium. The mining process requires large amounts of water, and in a region already facing severe drought, residents and farmers worry the lithium boom could drain their water supply [2].
The investigation into the Imperial Valley was reported by Inside Climate News and Columbia Journalism Investigations [2].
Together, the two cases point to a hard question facing the green energy transition: the same mineral that powers cleaner cars and grids is being pulled from deserts where water is already scarce, and where local communities say they are the ones absorbing the risk.