The Brief

An Imperial County judge cleared the way for the Hell’s Kitchen project, one of the world’s largest lithium mines, when he recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by civic and environmental groups.

Hell’s Kitchen, in the Salton Sea, promises to unearth a motherlode of lithium, a mineral essential to electric car batteries, cellphones and other electronics. While the court decision is expected to open a floodgate for U.S. lithium production, it has disappointed community organizers who worry the mine will endanger nearby residents.

The nonprofits Comite Civico del Valle and Earthworks argued in their lawsuit that the environmental review for Hell’s Kitchen did not fully address the project’s effects on water supply and air quality, and that the company developing it, Controlled Thermal Resources, didn’t consult with local Native American tribes as required by law. On Jan. 9 Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Jones ruled that Controlled Thermal Resources had met those requirements, freeing it to resume construction.

Opponents said that decision greenlights the project without sufficient environmental protection and community input.

“A just transition to renewable energy requires that we don’t create new sacrifice zones for

lithium mining,” Jared Naimark, California mining organizer with Earthworks, said in a statement.

Rodney Colwell, CEO of Controlled Thermal Resources, said he is pleased with the decision and expects to start construction in five to six months. However, the lawsuit set the project back a year or more.

“We’re happy to get past it, but it has cost us a lot of time and it has put the project at risk,” he said. “We haven’t been able to raise capital. We haven’t been able to move forward with development at all.”

Now that it’s back on track, Colwell said the company expects to start generating geothermal energy by the end of 2026 and mining lithium after that.

California leaders are determined to transition the public to electric vehicles over the next decade as part of the state’s battle against climate change. To do that, they’ll need lots of lithium.

That’s where the Salton Sea and Hell’s Kitchen come in. Energy companies are already producing geothermal energy at the site, extracting hot, high-pressure brine to generate electricity. The brine is rich with minerals, including more than 3,400 kilotons of lithium: enough to make over 375 million electric vehicle batteries, according to the Department of Energy. Hell’s Kitchen will remove minerals from the brine and then reinject it into aquifers around the Salton Sea.

State and federal officials gushed about the prospect of that much domestic lithium, predicting that the area they call “Lithium Valley” could become one of the world’s biggest sources of the “white gold,” freeing the U.S. from depending on other countries for the critical mineral.

“The development in Imperial Valley is a gamechanger for not just Southern California but the entire nation in shifting lithium dependence on foreign countries to a domestic supply,” Controlled Thermal Resources stated in a press release.

But local organizers and academics raised a red flag, pointing to uncertainty about the extraction process and possible pollution.

“The direct lithium extraction technology that the Hell’s Kitchen Lithium Project plans to deploy has only been tested at a demonstration level, and their Imperial County project would be one of the first commercial plants of this scale in the United States,” said Luis Olmedo, Executive Director for Comite Civico del Valle, in a statement.

“It’s got a lot of unknowns in terms of air quality,” added James Blair, a geography professor at Cal Poly Pomona who published research on the project. “This is already a degraded region, not only from the impacts of agriculture, but also the receding Salton Sea itself.”

Blair told CalMatters the environmental review is fuzzy about how much toxic dust the mine would produce, how much water is needed to dilute the brine and whether the mining process would release harmful substances such as hydrogen sulfide or radon.

“The Hell’s Kitchen project can do much more to mitigate environmental impacts,” particularly on water shortages and drought, he said.

Colwell said those concerns are unfounded and described the lithium extraction process as a “closed-loop system” that won’t generate landfill waste or air pollution.

“It is the cleanest lithium technology on the planet,” he said.

Jones ruled that the company has adequately addressed the project’s effects on water supply and couldn’t analyze potential future air quality impact.

Olmedo said the court ruling doesn’t satisfy the nonprofits’ concerns. They want stronger water conservation measures, better protections for tribal resources and more details about waste generation and water recycling. They’re seeking a legal agreement between the company and Imperial Valley residents to ensure those demands are satisfied.

Olmedo said his organization “will exhaust all available legal and public policy channels, including consideration of appealing the trial decision, to ensure that the residents and environment of the Imperial Valley receive the highest threshold of protection.”

Crowds packed into the Pike Outlets in downtown Long Beach on Thursday evening for the free motocross and car show that marks the beginning of Grand Prix weekend every year: Thunder Thursday.

Stunt motorcyclist rides in the air for the Thunder Thursday event by The Pike Outlets, Long Beach on April 16, 2026.

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Already, the area has transformed into 1.97 miles of track that, on Sunday, will belong to the world’s best IndyCar racers as about 200,000 fans watch them during the 51st annual Grand Prix.

Marcus Ericsson driving the purple and black indy car races against Rinus Veekay driving blue and white car race on Shoreline Drive, Long Beach on April 16, 2026

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On Thursday night, families, fans and revelers got a taste of the high-energy fun with motocross stunt shows, exhibition races, classic car displays and pit crew competitions.

Audiences took their phones to record the final race for the Thunder Thursday event on Shoreline Drive by The Pike Outlets, in Long Beach, April 16, 2026 Photo by Justin Enriquez

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Lifesize cutouts of Deputy Ringo Starr next to the defunct bathroom, Freddy Krueger standing over the entrance, delicate china guarded by the Incredible Hulk‚ and 150 tons of books and magazines.

It is moving day at Planet Books, the 4,000-square-foot warehouse of used tomes, toys, life-size posters and delicate antiquities, and all of it must leave.

Store owner James Rappaport and manager Argyl Houser have spent the first half of the month packing, consolidating and bidding goodbye to the warehouse they have worked in since 2020. They must have it all out by the end of the month.

Around them, boxes line the narrow aisles, taped tight and labeled by genre. Some glass cases are emptied of their knick-knacks, some walls naked of their posters. Public radio, KJazz 88.1, remains on as usual, though Rappaport said the queue has been nonstop rock and blues.

“We had like three solid days of Eric Clapton,” he said with a smile.

It’s a swift change from months ago, when the two were told they needed to vacate by the end of April, risking either closure or confining their goods to storage as they struggled to find a new home.

“I couldn’t find anything within a thirty-mile radius that was under two dollars [per square foot],” Rappaport said.

Approaching the store’s 30th anniversary, the two are set to celebrate in a new location, a former furniture store turned sound studio at 1819 Redondo Ave. — the second time the bookstore has moved since it opened in 1998.

The new place is larger — by about 600 square feet — and twice the cost to rent. It’ll also be a year-long sublease before they can lease it on their own. But it’s a needed move, one that offers the opportunity to organize, consolidate and rebuild their vision of a bookstore that the two have talked about for years but never had the momentum to act on.

“It’s a huge amount of work, but it’s also an opportunity to make the store just the way we wanted … an opportunity to really make the store shine,” Houser said.

The two plan to downsize a tenth of their stock through donations to nearby schools, shelters and prisons. They’re giving away half of their hardcover mysteries, at least half of their small paperbacks and looking to downsize their knick-knacks. Rappaport is also selling his treasured vinyl collection.

“It’s been in the back for years, and I’ve finally decided I’ve got to start selling my things, getting too old to save everything,” Rappaport said.

The new store, they envision, will have art books in the front; specialty vintage will rest in the back left and leatherbound classics will have the windowed area to the right. Their rarest tomes, currently spread across five locations in the store, will be consolidated and put in a glass display.

They want better seating and wider aisles, envisioning a trendy establishment where customers can sit at tables and couches and sip cappuccinos or listen to live music — preferably jazz or blues — and enjoy poetry readings or book signings.

It’s a bittersweet move and a goodbye to a long chapter of the bookstore’s history. But with change comes the relief of certainty, a fresh start and finally, two new toilets that actually work.

On the steep, brush-covered slopes of the Arroyo Seco, home to the Rose Bowl, a new kind of wildfire defense has arrived — on cloven hooves.

Starting this morning, more than 600 goats are being deployed across roughly 100 acres to help kick off Earth Day celebrations in the city.

Over the next six to eight weeks, they’ll reduce fire risk by munching through invasive vegetation like mustard that can quickly turn into dangerous fuel.

The pilot program, led by One Arroyo Foundation with city backing, combines an ancient technique with urgency around climate change, which the Eaton Fire that devastated parts of Pasadena bordering Altadena has only heightened.

“It’s become more evident that we need to do everything that we can to make sure that we’re adding wildfire resiliency to the way we manage this place,” said Daniel Rossman, executive director of the foundation.

The Arroyo sits within a high-severity fire zone, according to state maps, and acts as a natural corridor for wind, meaning a fire could spread rapidly if conditions align, Rossman said.

The G.O.A.T.'s

Pasadena is the latest Southern California city where goats are eating the fuel load, joining Arcadia, Glendale and Santa Clarita.

Unlike traditional brush clearance methods, which often rely on gas-powered equipment, goats offer a low-emissions alternative.

“You don’t need fossil fuels to run goats,” Rossman said. “They run on their own fuel, which is the brush that they eat.”

The grazers also shine where humans and machinery struggle on the Arroyo’s steep, uneven terrain.

“The goats can go to places that are very difficult for humans to get to with heavy equipment,” Rossman said. “Also, as they go up those hills, they're not degrading them as an adult [human] would by stepping on them with just two feet.”

Other cities like Arcadia have also hired goats to graze on fuel loads.

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While on assignment, the animals owned by Capra Environmental Services, Corp., will graze day and night in the Arroyo, watched over by a herding dog and a herder who will live in a trailer on-site.

“The goats do not have a strong labor union,” Rossman said, tongue firmly in cheek. “They work 24 hours a day. But on the other hand, they take naps whenever they feel like it.”

One Arroyo is covering the roughly $85,000 cost and has launched a “Goat Fund Me” campaign to invite public support. The nonprofit will be posting about the goats' whereabouts on its Instagram so locals can come watch the animals at work.

Just be aware that there will be temporary electric fencing set up to keep the goats from wandering into nearby homes and businesses. And don’t try to pet the goats.

“These goats are generally grumpy,” Rossman said. The animals that can stand humans will be at a petting zoo in Saturday’s Earth Day event by the Rose Bowl's Aquatic Center.

A test run

The hope is that the goat grazers will demonstrate success so that city officials may adopt the effort long-term.

How to know if it’s working?

Rossman said the first test is to see how well goats clear the invasive species and make room for the native plants.

“We want to get to that sweet spot where they chew things down and that then allows these perennial natives that stay green year-round to come back and compete,” Rossman said.

The timing of the goat deployment close to the last of the winter rains was intentional. Rossman said rain spurs rapid plant growth, especially invasive species that then dry out and turn into “flash fuels” by summer.

Removing that growth before peak fire season, he said, is key to protecting an “environmental treasure” that even more locals have turned to since the Eaton Fire.

“Many people who maybe used to hike Eaton Canyon are coming to the Arroyo and enjoying this place to connect with nature and to connect with themselves and restore,” Rossman said.