Environmental Problems
The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) has noted that salt toxicosis has killed over 4,000 birds in brine ponds produced by the Trona plant. The DFG made an agreement with the company in 2005 to allow a certain number of bird deaths, if the company to paid $300,000 for a new wetlands area in the southern Owens Valley on the main migratory bird route.
There are allegations of arsenic poisoning of plant workers. SVM argued in a letter to the State Water Resources Control Board, that concentration of total dissolved solids, chlorides, sodium and other minerals are higher in natural ephemeral pools than in the company's depleted brine ponds.
The Searles Lake brine is rich in arsenic, and a unique anaerobic, extremely haloalkaliphilic bacterium which uses arsenic for respiration has been isolated from the mud.
Read more about this topic: Searles Valley Minerals
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