“The salty, mineral rich brine is not suitable for agricultural or potable use, and we work very closely with the communities to ensure that we operate in a sustainable way,” wrote Hailey Quinn, Albemarle’s External Communications Manager, in an email to Danwatch.
But according to several researchers that Danwatch has consulted, the subsurface brine deposits exist in relation to other water resources in the Atacama — including the freshwater sources that the desert’s indigenous communities derive their water from. This means that the total amount of water will decrease concurrently with the brine extraction — and that, in the long run, freshwater risks being mixed with saliferous brine and thus becoming undrinkable.
“When you pump up the brine, you simultaneously force freshwater into motion, which ends up mixing with the brine. The freshwater then gets an increasing salinity, which has consequences for the local residents,” says Ingrid Garcés, who researches the Atacama salt flat as a professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Mineral Processing at the Chilean University of Antofagasta.
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According to Stephan Lutter, a professor at the Institute for Ecological Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, who has researched water-intensive mining, this is a general problem with “water-mining”. He points out that similar industries often affect the water resources of other reservoirs they do not pump directly from, as the underground water deposits are connected.
“It affects both the local population and the environment,” Stephan Lutter says.
Earlier this year, researchers at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability published the most comprehensive independent study on the issue so far. It identified a clear negative correlation between lithium extraction and the vegetation and soil moisture of the Atacama.