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Comment by obblekk | Hacker News Reader

There should definitely be a plan for the brine.

I'm optimistic we could:

* Build ocean pipelines that disperse brine over much larger volumes of water to minimize impact on wildlife

* Dump the brine water in engineered desert fields where it will evaporate and deposit salt reserves.

In general, we should be aware of the whole lifecycle of a solution, and optimistically believe we can solve each problem with more work.

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> Dump the brine water in engineered desert fields where it will evaporate and deposit salt reserves.

Honestly, the Salton Sea would be a great place to dump the brine. It would keep the water levels up and reduce the respiratory issues caused by drying, and any ecosystem to be destroyed has been thoroughly destroyed for decades.

Nix the "turn the manmade salt lake to a manmade fresh lake" plan, and use the created freshwater for agriculture directly, or send it off to LA, or do anything with it that isn't "refill the accidental lake that already has evaporation and pollution issues". It's a salt lake, use it as one.

This is something I still don't understand about the original plan: Where is the Salton Sea expected to get more water from on an ongoing basis? If you keep extracting from it and not refilling it, it's just going to keep getting smaller and saltier. Agriculture isn't going to put back out as much as it takes in (the plants need it, after all). Sure, you can drag it out a few more years with desal, but eventually it's not going to be much of a sea, just a salty pile.

AFAICT, water is pumped from both the Sea of Cortez & the Salton Sea to a desal plant. The fresh water is used for irrigation etc, and the runoff from primary use replenishes the Salton.

The Salton sea is the home of a huge lithium deposit, and it's unlikely that anything but geothermal and lithium mining will happen there in the near future. Certainly not "restoration" to what it was when it was accidentally created.

My understanding is that the lithium in the salton sea is relatively less accessible than other nearby lithium deposits, such as the new mine starting up in northern Nevada. Sort of nearby I suppose.

Between that and the increasing availability of sodium ion batteries it may never actually be economical to mine the Salton Sea, especially considering people actually live nearby and would be affected by the mine; unlike the mines in northern Nevada.

They'd be mining the brine in which the lithium is dissolved as well as constructing geothermal plants to take advantage of the temperature of the liquid.

Construction is already beginning.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/12/07/lithiu...

Huh, I guess I was mistaken that restoration on the Salton Sea was already in progress. I've seen large flocks of birds in and around it and assumed there was food for them in it. But it sounds like no, it's still horrible.

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