The companies say there is no other technology proven at scale. At the salt flat, two companies pump out brine from below the surface. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the most important mining areas for lithium, 2020-03-11 Lithium mining: What you should know about the contentious issue The discussion focuses on the extraction of raw materials in the South American salt deserts. Yet when Eduardo Bitran oversaw a hydrological study of the salt flat in 2016 and 2017 as an officer in Chileâs economic development agency, the study tallied brine alongside freshwater. The Salar de Atacama in Chile is a large, dry salt flat surrounded by mountain ranges and is one of the driest places on Earth. Lithium mining consumes enormous quantities of water in some of the world’s driest places. With increased use of smartphones, mobile computers, and electric cars, there is higher demand for the soft, silvery metal.Brines from beneath the salty crust are pumped to evaporation ponds, visible as the blue rectangles in these Landsat images. Lithium stocks, particularly lithium mining stocks, have soared along with the price of the metal since early 2016 due to rising demand for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. When the new constitution is written, these kinds of property rights are likely to be at the centre of debates, he says. In colossal pools under the power of the sun, the water evaporates out of the brine, leaving behind white salts that are sold into international markets. The huge increase in lithium demand is drawing additional mining companies into the Atacama and other salt flats in the Andes. Indigenous groups called on the government to revoke SQMâs environmental permit. El Loa Province . Beneath the Atacama Salt Flat, a Rhode Island-sized expanse of salts, a major source of lithium is locked in an underground reservoir. With a long history of negotiating with copper miners, the Atacameños have been the most successful in engaging with the mining sector, Barros says. Photo: Pixabay/TravelCoffeeBook. In the midst of the legal battle, the nationâs environmental regulator announced it would conduct the regionâs first comprehensive management plan. 43-101 Technical Report . Water flowed from the basinâs high mountains, past his feet, and toward the lagoons on the brim of the salt flat. The salars with the highest lithium concentrations are located in Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile, in an area called “the lithium triangle.” Lithium obtained from salars is then recovered in the form of lithium carbonate, the main raw material that is used by companies in lithium-ion batteries. As mining projects there expand to meet skyrocketing demand, they have met resistance from Indigenous communities that surround the salt flat, and from regulators who are trying to understand a one-of-a-kind water cycle. Few had researched the life in the Atacamaâs extreme environment when she first published on the subject in 2008. Albemarle, a North Carolina-based corporation and one of the two companies extracting lithium from the Chilean salt plain Salar de Atacama with Sociedad Química y … With no outlet, water exits only through evaporation â a process that leaves behind minerals and creates the salt flatâs hard salty crust. But lithium isnât like copper. Featured image: Salar de Atacama â the Atacama Salt Flat. Evidence uncovered by E&T appears to show that lithium-mining company SQM is playing a direct role in damaging the local environment in Chile’s Atacama salt flats, as its activities reduce water levels in an already dry region, with severe effects on local communities, protected lagoons and areas of … Dorador thought telling people about the diverse ecology would incline others to protect the area. This view is shared by local communities who live on the edges of the basin, said Jorge Muñoz Coca, a member of the Lickanantay Indigenous group. âIf brine was recognised as a vital element that allows the existence of other ways of life, that would be fair both for science and also for the Indigenous peoples, and so for the health of the territory,â he added. As demand for lithium has rapidly increased in recent years, so have the pressures on the Atacama, its water table, biodiversity and nearby communities. In the wastelands of Salar de Atacama, about 700 miles north of Santiago, is a huge lithium mine field operated by Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM), a Chilean chemical company, and the world’s third largest produced of lithium. Lithium brine, increasingly sought to fulfil global climate goals, has challenged humanityâs attempts to classify and regulate the natural world. But in Chile, scientists are finding that the rapid rate of removal may be disrupting water availability in the surrounding desert. The Greenbushes lithium project is located in Greenbushes, … Greenbushes Lithium Project – 86.4Mt. Soaring lithium demand has raised questions about whether Atacama can support current and future levels of lithium production along with the needs of sprawling nearby copper mines… Itâs a point of contention that has fuelled a conflict between local groups and companies over the importance of a water resource in one of the worldâs driest deserts. And there was a deficit: More water was leaving the salt flat than was entering it. The primary global source of lithium production is currently derived from Chilean and Argentinean continental brine deposits as The Salar de Atacama is the location of the world’s largest lithium brine mine to date operated by Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile S.A. Diego Rivera-Salazar spent part of his childhood in an Indigenous community in Chileâs wetter south. and Salinas Grandes in Argentina(6,000 km (2,300 sq mi)). The Idea That âGreen Technologyâ Can Help Save the Environment Is Dangerous. Is it porous? At this point, Marazuela concludes, dropping evaporation rates can no longer counteract the effects of brine pumping. âLos pescados no votan. There, the idea of buying and selling water clashed with community norms. Others have said that companies could potentially re-inject the water that typically evaporates and improve the capture of lithium from salts. Lithium is one of Earthâs most widespread elements. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), Mapping, Remote Sensing, and Geospatial Data, earth resources observation and science center. âSo itâs a fairly straightforward colonial situation,â said Alonso Barros. âWe need to think [of] the system as a whole, as a complex ecosystem unit instead of seeing it as compartments, because at some point those things are related,â said Dorador. Landsat imagery can help study worldwide land change effects from a variety of mining types. âThe desert historically has been seen as a wasteland,â said Cristina Dorador, a microbiologist at the University of Antofagasta. The silver-white metal is found dissolved in brine, a mere 130 feet below the surface of the desert. Also read: The Idea That âGreen Technologyâ Can Help Save the Environment Is Dangerous. To restore balance, lithium producers would have to figure out how to extract less water. Since 1980, two companies have been mining lithium in the Salar de Atacama, Chile’s largest salt flat, which holds a third of the world’s reserves of the mineral. UTM 572,925E – 7,442,099N . In Chile, water rights depend on use. The topography of the core portion of the salar exhibits a high level of roughness, the result of evaporation and ephemeral surface water, unlike the most other salt flats, as for example the Salar de U… Vasudevan Mukunth, editor: mukunth@thewire.in, The Breakthrough Science Society has issued a statement condemning the UGC's decision to encourage higher educationâ¦, "Sci-Hubâs view is that science should not be controlled by a few big companies but it should be a dynamic networkâ¦, World Health Organization has agreed a no-fault compensation plan for claims of serious side effects in people in 9â¦, "LBR [a chicken protein] has an important role in the vertebrate cell nucleus â but no one suspected it also had aâ¦, Over three lakh beneficiaries have received COVID-19 vaccine till date in Delhi since the start of the inoculationâ¦, Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog (RKA) has decided to postpone its controversial âcow examâ which was scheduled for Februarâ¦, The US has said it is looking forward to an âoverarchingâ MoU to enhance health partnership with India and assertedâ¦, On February 19, Patanjali Ayurved launched a new indigenously developed treatment for COVID-19 infections named Corâ¦, The largest U.S. oil refiners released tons of air pollutants into the skies over Texas this past week, according tâ¦, In an exclusive interview, Alexandra Elbakyan spoke of her own days in college, where she said she first felt the nâ¦, Patanjaliâs Coronil has been issued a Certificate of Pharmaceutical Product by the AYUSH section of the Central Druâ¦, Atlantic El Niño is linked to floods in coastal West Africa from Sierra Leone to southern Nigeria, and droughts inâ¦, Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical firm Dr Reddyâs has initiated the process of obtaining an âaccelerated approvalâ forâ¦, On December 24, 2020, Delhi HC conducted its first hearing for the ongoing case against Alexandra Elbakyanâs websitâ¦, In December, Antarctica lost its status as the last continent free of COVID-19 when 36 people at the Chilean Bernarâ¦, In Lithium Mines Beneath the Atacama Salt Flats, a Crisis Waits to Erupt, A Year Since COVID-19 Began, WHO Urges Fair Vaccine Distribution To All, Study Suggests Habitat Loss Is Leading To Inbreeding of Indian Tigers, Poaching in J&K Remains Unchecked Despite Conservation Attempts, Border Disputes Threaten Climate Science in the Himalaya, Breakthrough Science Society Condemns UGC’s Promotion of ‘Cow Science’ Exam. NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Atacama Lithium Project, Region 2 of Chile LC062561-2. After several months the water evaporates, leaving a mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and lithium salts which is then filtered and placed into another evaporation pool. Corfo helps to oversee lithium mining in the Salar. Chileâs lithium ends up in ceramics, lubricants, and most often, batteries, but the metal first enters balance sheets as a super-salty liquid. Copper miners, which once used more freshwater for their operations than lithium producers, have begun using desalinated seawater. When brine is pumped out, the water table drops, and less water evaporates naturally from below the surface. The Salar is particularly rich in lithium salts.Lithium is used in rechargeable batteries. Freshwater pools may soon begin losing water. Brine is primarily used by companies, but growing scientific evidence suggests that it impacts usable water. But âitâs not enough.â. The extremely dry and windy conditions here result in an efficient process. Ian Morse (@ianjmorse) is a journalist of natural resources, once based in eastern Indonesia, and now in Seattle. Read the original article. âNature always finds its balance.â. But backed by growing evidence that brine extraction may reduce freshwater supply, advocates want to classify brine as water. The brine, several times saltier than seawater, stays low. The concentrated salts are left behind after evaporation from which lithium carbonate and other materials can be extracted.The lithium mining activities in the Salar de Atacama have expanded over the years, as can be seen in these Landsat images acquired in 1993 and 2015. The metal is found just about everywhere, even in small traces in drinking water. Even within the salt flat, he says, brine extraction in the middle of the flat has no impact on brine on the edges where flamingos live. The Atacama Salar is the World’s highest grade and largest producing lithium brine deposit, and currently produces approximately one third of global lithium output from two production facilities operated by Sociedad Quimica y Minera (“SQM”) and Rockwood Lithium. Customary law would in theory grant Indigenous groups the rights to lagoons in the basin, but the state claims ownership. However, in a series of studies, University of Vienna postdoctoral geosciences researcher Miguel Ãngel Marazuela found companies are pumping brine so fast that it may be jeopardising the balance. Evidence uncovered by E&T appears to show that lithium-mining company SQM is playing a direct role in damaging the local environment in Chile’s Atacama salt flats, as its activities reduce water levels in an already dry region, with severe effects on local communities, protected lagoons and areas of alluvial muds. Its average elevation is about 2,300 m above sea level. Brine âis mostly water,â said Bitran, now an engineering professor at Adolfo Ibáñez University. Under an Indigenous rights law, Atacameños can earn legal water rights if they prove a long history of water use. Citizens can buy, sell, and even take out mortgages on naturally occurring water, if they can prove they will use it. In 2016, after decades of extraction, activists caught international headlines as they called out shrinking water resources. If lithium brine were to be defined as water, local communities may not be able to buy it. On the slopes of the basin, thousands of feet above the centre of the salt flat, several Indigenous communities rely on the mountainsâ freshwater that fills aquifers and streams to sustain themselves and livestock. The Lickanantay have lived with, and suffered the consequences of, copper and lithium mining for many decades. He believes itâs a mistake to regulate the substance as if it has no influence on the surrounding freshwater. Mining starts by drilling a hole and pump… The Salar de Atacama in Chile is a large, dry salt flat surrounded by mountain ranges and is one of the driest places on Earth. The tour guide was super helpful and looked after us ( as most of us were new to this high altitude) prepared some amazing food, and played some awesome music. Its water canât be used for drinking, irrigation, or other purposes. Stefan Debruyne, a business development director at SQM, says that the companyâs data show that the mixing zone has prevented its pumping from shrinking water supply. Can one side affect the other? This article was originally published on Undark. With brine regulated as a mineral, the government retains ownership and allows private companies to manage their own operations. SQM made an online monitoring system about its salt flat operations available to the public in August, and in October, the company said it would reduce brine pumping by 20% this year and by 50% by 2030, without reducing lithium output. Flamingos began migrating to the flat in smaller numbers. Among other things, theyâve learned that precipitation at high altitude falls to the earth and seeps through mountainsâ porous rocks. Instead, Bitran says, mining companies could collaborate to secure water for their operations and invest in water mining technology that reduces brine use. On a September afternoon, at the confluence of two streams that flow to the salt flat, Muñoz Coca shepherded sheep and goats in a landscape of cactus and shrubs. Atacama Lithium Project . Tesla's increasing production of its more affordable Model 3, which it began manufacturing in small quantities in mid-… âThis water goes toward the big salt flat and finds the balance there,â he said, speaking in Spanish in a voice message to Undark. The salt flat encompasses 3,000 km (1,200 sq mi), is about 100 km (62 mi) long and 80 km (50 mi) wide, which makes it the third largest in the world, after Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia (10,582 km (4,086 sq mi)). Whether the brine pumping affects freshwater supply and flamingo habitats hinges on the mixing zone between freshwater and brine. Sara says that lithium mining on the Atacama is using up all the fresh water in the region's aquifers - layers of porous rock beneath the soil which act as stores of water. Over the past few years, scientists have begun to study this ancient arid area and its salt flat with a particular focus on human-caused change. As gravity pulls it down, the water collects in a basin larger than the Hawaii islands. âDiscussing the availability of the water resource in relation to the use of brine is equivalent to discussing the availability of fresh water in the country by incorporating the available seawater on the country’s coasts,â Albemarle wrote in a statement to Undark. Beneath the Atacama Salt Flat, a Rhode Island-sized expanse of salts, a major source of lithium is locked in an underground reservoir. A 2019 study of satellite imagery found that drought conditions had worsened, soil moisture and vegetation declined, and daytime temperatures rose.
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