Searles Valley Minerals

Last updated
Searles Valley Minerals plant in Trona, California Searles Valley Minerals - panoramio.jpg
Searles Valley Minerals plant in Trona, California

Searles Valley Minerals Inc. is a raw materials mining and production company with corporate offices in Overland Park, Kansas. It is owned by the Indian company Nirma. [1] [2] It has major operations in the Searles Valley centered in Trona, California where it is the town's largest employer. [3] [4] The company produces borax, boric acid, soda ash, salt cake, and salt. It also owns the Trona Railway. [1] [5]

Contents

The Trona facility extracts and ships 1.75 million tons of chemicals per year. [3]

History

The mining, production, and assets of the present day Searles Valley Minerals Inc. have a long and varied history.

When John Wemple Searles arrived in the area in the 1860s, he was looking for gold and silver to mine. [6] Instead he found a white crystalline powder, borax, in the dry Searles Lake bed. [7] In 1873, he went into production as the San Bernardino Borax Mining Company to mine borax. Long mule teams were used to haul borax in wagons to San Pedro, until the much closer settlement of Mojave was used after the Southern Pacific Railroad reached it in 1876. [7]

In 1895 The San Bernardino Borax Mining Company was sold by Searles to the Pacific Coast Borax Company, owned by Francis "Borax King" Smith. [7] He shut down production at the company's section of Searles Lake the next year. [7] [8]

American Trona Company

The American Trona Company was founded in 1913 by the British-owned Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa company. [7] In 1914 the company completed the Trona Railway line from Searles Station south to a junction with the Southern Pacific Railroad. Also in 1914, the American Trona Corporation established the company-owned town of Trona, named for crystals of soda ash formed by the evaporation of chemical-rich water commonly found in the lake bed. [7] The production of potash began in 1915. [7]

In 1917, construction was completed on the American Trona Corporation Building in San Pedro, to process and store salt potash. In 1926, after becoming the American Potash & Chemical Corporation, it began producing borax, soda ash, and sodium sulfate. Productions of these chemicals continued to expand until the 1980s.[ citation needed ]

Post-WW II

After World War II, American Potash had labor relations problems due to allegations that Latino workers were paid lower wages than White workers. Later, Latino workers were promoted to managerial positions. [3] In 1962 the company received nationwide recognition and an award for its innovative solvent extraction process to recover boric acid and potassium sulfate from weak brines. [5]

In 1974 American Potash and Chemical was acquired by Kerr-McGee. [7] However they didn’t want to own the company town and sold it. They cut production in half in 1982 and instituted massive layoffs. [7]

Kerr-McGee sold the Searles Valley production facilities in 1990, to capital investors D. George Harris and Associates, which formed the North American Chemical Company. [5] Ownership changed again in 1998 when IMC Global corporation acquired North American Chemical Company. [5]

21st century

In 2004 when Sun Capital, LLC purchased IMC Global corporation, the North American Chemical Company facilities at Trona and Westend were renamed Searles Valley Minerals, Inc. [3] [5] [9]

In November 2007, Karnavati Holdings, a subsidiary of the Indian corporation Nirma Limited based in Ahmedabad (India), purchased Searles Valley Minerals corporation from Sun Capital Partners. [7] [1] [2]

Searles Valley Minerals Inc. is part of Climate VISION (Voluntary Innovative Sector Initiatives: Opportunities Now), a public/private partnership which is seeking to reduce US industry greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent between 2002 and 2012. [9] As it operates on government owned land, Searles Valley Minerals Inc. pays royalties of millions of dollars each year to both the federal and state governments. Much of those royalties cover the expenses of local school districts. [10]

Argus Cogeneration Plant

The Argus Cogeneration Plant of Searles Valley Minerals. Argus Cogeneration Plant.jpg
The Argus Cogeneration Plant of Searles Valley Minerals.

The Argus Cogeneration Plant is a coal-fired power station located adjacent to the mineral processing plant in Trona, California. The power station has nameplate capacity of 63 MW and produced 296 GWh of electricity in 2018. [11] It is the last coal-fired power station still operating in California. [12]

Unit 1 was commissioned in 1978 and has a nameplate capacity of 63 MW. [12] [13] Unit 2 was commissioned in January 1991 and had a nameplate capacity of 103 MW before ceasing operations on October 2, 2014. [14]

The power station is located at the coordinates 35°45′54″N117°22′56″W / 35.76500°N 117.38222°W / 35.76500; -117.38222 .

Environmental problems

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife found that migrating birds stopping at the Trona plant brine ponds have died from salt toxicosis, salt encrustation, and oiling. In 2005, Searles agreed on a mitigation plan which "allows for the continuing take of birds (not to exceed an average of 241 birds/year) in exchange for continued bird protection and rescue efforts and a contribution of up to $550,000 (plus $10K/year for maintenance for 40 years) for a 100+ acre wetlands creation project at the south end of Owens Lake," about 55 miles north. [15] [16]

There are allegations of arsenic poisoning of plant workers. [17] SVM argued 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. [18]

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. [19]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owens Lake</span> Dry lake in the Owens Valley, California

Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Lone Pine. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, Owens held significant water until 1913, when much of the Owens River was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, causing Owens Lake to desiccate by 1926. In 2006, 5% of the water flow was restored. As of 2013, it is the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trona</span> Hydrated sodium carbonate mineral

Trona (trisodium hydrogendicarbonate dihydrate, also sodium sesquicarbonate dihydrate, Na2CO3·NaHCO3·2H2O) is a non-marine evaporite mineral. It is mined as the primary source of sodium carbonate in the United States, where it has replaced the Solvay process used in most of the rest of the world for sodium carbonate production. Turkey is also a major producer.

Searles Valley is a valley in the northern Mojave Desert of California, with the northern half in Inyo County and the southern half in San Bernardino County, California, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Searles Lake</span> Lake in the state of California, United States

Searles Lake is an endorheic dry lake in the Searles Valley of the Mojave Desert, in northwestern San Bernardino County, California. The lake in the past was also called Slate Range Lake and Borax Lake.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Marion Smith</span> American Mining businessman

Francis Marion Smith was an American miner, business magnate and civic builder in the Mojave Desert, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Oakland, California. He was known nationally and internationally as "Borax Smith" and "The Borax King", as his company produced the popular 20-Mule-Team Borax brand of household cleaner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pacific Coast Borax Company</span> United States mining company founded in 1890

The Pacific Coast Borax Company (PCB) was a United States mining company founded in 1890 by the American borax magnate Francis Smith, the "Borax King".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanksite</span> Sulfate mineral

Hanksite is a sulfate mineral, distinguished as one of only a handful that contain both carbonate and sulfate ions (a sulfate carbonate). It has the chemical formula Na22K(SO4)9(CO3)2Cl.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slate Range (California)</span>

The Slate Range is located in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California, southwest of Death Valley and east of Trona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trona Railway</span>

The Trona Railway is a 30.5 mi (49.1 km) short-line railroad owned by Searles Valley Minerals. The TRC interchanges with the Lone Pine Subdivision of the Union Pacific Railroad at Searles, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Potash Railroad</span>

The United States Potash Railroad was a 3 ft narrow gauge railroad built in 1931 to carry potash from the mines to the mill at Loving, New Mexico where the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad had a spur that went out to the refinery to carry out the processed potash. The 16-mile (26 km) railroad was located at Loving, New Mexico, just east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, USA, and Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Trona Corporation Building</span> United States historic place

American Trona Corporation Building is an industrial building on Pacific Avenue between 28th and 30th Streets in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was built from 1916-1917 by the American Trona Corporation of California, to process and store salt potash from the company's mining facilities at Searles Lake in the Mojave Desert, near Trona in eastern San Bernardino County, California. It is now on the grounds of the Fort MacArthur housing annex of the Los Angeles Air Force Base.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Searles Valley, California</span> Census-designated place in California, United States

Searles Valley is a census-designated place (CDP) in the Searles Valley of the Mojave Desert, in northwestern San Bernardino County, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trona, San Bernardino County, California</span> Unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California, United States

Trona is an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California. In 2015 it had a population of approximately 1,900. Trona is at the western edge of Searles Lake, a dry lake bed in Searles Valley, southwest of Death Valley. The town takes its name from the mineral trona, abundant in the lakebed. It is about 170 miles (274 km) northeast of Los Angeles, on State Route 178. The ZIP code is 93562.

Allkem Limited, known as Orocobre Limited until 30 November 2021, is an Argentinian mining company that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Arcadium Lithium. Headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Allkem's portfolio includes lithium brine operations in Argentina, a hard-rock lithium operation in Australia and a lithium hydroxide conversion facility in Japan. Allkem is dual listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange. In May 2023, Allkem agreed terms to merge with Livent. In January 2024, Allkem and Livent merged to form the NYSE-listed Arcadium Lithium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valley Wells, California</span> Census-designated place in California, United States

Valley Wells is a census-designated place in Inyo County, California. Prior to 2010, for census purposes it was part of Homewood Canyon-Valley Wells CDP. The 2010 census reported that population was zero. The town is now registered as California Historical Landmark #443; in 1849, several groups of midwestern emigrants settled here to secure water from nearby Searles Lake.

American Potash and Chemical Company was a large chemical manufacturer in the United States from the 1920s through the 1960s. It produced various chemicals for US industry and the US military. It was bought by Kerr-McGee in 1967, which reformed it into the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation (KMCC) around 1970.

Argus is an unincorporated community in the Searles Valley of the Mojave Desert, in northwestern San Bernardino County, California. Argus is 17 miles (27 km) east-northeast of Ridgecrest.

Bromine production in the United States of 225,000 tonnes in 2013 made that country the second-largest producer of bromine, after Israel. The US supplied 29 percent of world production. Since 2007, all US bromine has been produced by two companies in southern Arkansas, which extract bromine from brine pumped from the Smackover Formation. At an advertised price of US$3.50 to US$3.90 per kg, the US 2013 US production would have a value of roughly US$800 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brine mining</span> Extracting materials from saltwater

Brine mining is the extraction of useful materials which are naturally dissolved in brine. The brine may be seawater, other surface water, groundwater, or hyper-saline solutions from several industries. It differs from solution mining or in-situ leaching in that those methods inject water or chemicals to dissolve materials which are in a solid state; in brine mining, the materials are already dissolved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Potash wars (California)</span> Conflict over potash deposits in the Searles Valley of California between 1910 and 1915

The Potash wars were a series of events that took place from 1910 to 1915 in the Searles Valley near Searles Lake, a dry lake, near the current town of Trona in the San Bernardino County of California. The Potash wars gained national and international news at the time due to the involvement of famous lawman Wyatt Earp and the importance of the valley's supply of potash at the time. Potash is an important crop fertilizer and the Searles Valley was a major supplier in the 1910s.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Justis, Ruth (November 28, 2007). "New owners for Trona plant". The Daily Independent.
  2. 1 2 "Nirma shares soar 7% on acquisition of US coenvironment". The Economic Times . November 27, 2007.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Hughes, Wesley G. (October 16, 2005). "Town at 'End of the World' Friendliness Runs Deep in Remote San Bernardino County Desert Hamlet". Los Angeles Daily News .
  4. "Leasing at Searles Lake". U.S. Department of the Interior - Bureau of Land Management.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Searles Valley Timeline". Searles Valley Historical Society.
  6. mojavedesert.net John W. Searles
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Searles Valley Historical Society.org: Searles Valley History Timeline
  8. San Bernardino Sun: "Tiny desert community of Trona hopes to rise from the ashes", by Beau Yarbrough, 24 October 2015.
  9. 1 2 Saholt, Linda (June 9, 2005). "Searles Valley Minerals takes steps to protect environment". The Daily Independent.
  10. Justis, Ruth (May 31, 2007). "Royalty cut a mixed bag for Trona". The Daily Independent.
  11. "Electricity Data Browser - Argus Cogen Plant". www.eia.gov. Retrieved 2020-02-16.
  12. 1 2 "Closing coal power plants has saved thousands of lives, study says". Los Angeles Times. 2020-01-21. Retrieved 2020-02-16.
  13. "Argus Cogen Plant Coal Plant CA USA - GEO". globalenergyobservatory.org. Retrieved 2020-02-16.
  14. "Argus Cogeneration Expansion Project Petition for Termination". California Energy Commission. ACE Cogeneration Company. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  15. "Searles Lake". California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
  16. Sward, Susan (July 6, 2008). "Ex-worker on crusade against chemical plant". San Francisco Chronicle.
  17. Sward, Susan (July 8, 2008). "Lawmakers call for probe of chemical plant". San Francisco Chronicle.
  18. letter
  19. Oremland, R., et al., "A Microbial Arsenic Cycle in a Salt-Saturated, Extreme Environment", Science, Vol. 308. no. 5726, pp. 1305 - 1308, 27 May 2005.

35°45′38″N117°22′44″W / 35.76056°N 117.37889°W / 35.76056; -117.37889 (Trona Mineral Processing Plant)