Lithium Race Becomes Water Race in California — SkimNews
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- Inside Climate News and Columbia Journalism Investigations collaborated on the investigation, which is datelined from Calipatria — a border town in California's Imperial Valley.
- Calipatria, California sits amid alfalfa and grain fields, and reporter William Cooper stopped at a dusty, vacant lot on a rural road there as the starting point of the reporting.
- William Cooper identified the lot's owner as one of many investors drawn to the area, signaling a speculative land rush underway in this agricultural border region.
- The investigation's headline framing — "the race for lithium is becoming a race for water" — argues that lithium extraction is now competing with farming for the region's water resources.
Why it matters: In the Imperial Valley, where alfalfa and grain already depend on tight water supplies, speculative land buying signals that the lithium industry is positioning itself as the next claimant on those same limited resources — a conflict the investigation frames as a race for water.
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