Searles Valley Minerals Inc. is a raw materials mining and production company with corporate offices in

Overland Park, Kansas Overland Park ( ) is the largest city in Johnson County, Kansas, United States, and the List of cities in Kansas#Highest population listing, second-most populous city in the state of Kansas. It is one of four principal city, principal cities in ...

. It is owned by the

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n company

Nirma Nirma is a conglomerate based in Ahmedabad, India, involved in the manufacture of various products, including detergents, soaps, cement, cosmetics, salt, soda ash, linear alkyl benzene, and injectables. It was founded in 1969 by Karsanbhai P ...

. It has major operations in the

Searles Valley 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. Searles Valley is located between the Argus Range to the ...

centered in Trona, California where it is the town's largest employer. The company produces

borax The BORAX Experiments were a series of safety experiments on boiling water nuclear reactors conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho.

boric acid Boric acid, more specifically orthoboric acid, is a compound of boron, oxygen, and hydrogen with formula . It may also be called hydrogen orthoborate, trihydroxidoboron or boracic acid. It is usually encountered as colorless crystals or a white ...

soda ash Sodium carbonate (also known as washing soda, soda ash, sal soda, and soda crystals) is the inorganic compound with the formula and its various hydrates. All forms are white, odourless, water-soluble salts that yield alkaline solutions in water ...

salt cake Sodium sulfate (also known as sodium sulphate or sulfate of soda) is the inorganic compound with formula Na2SO4 as well as several related hydrates. All forms are white solids that are highly soluble in water. With an annual production of 6 mill ...

, and

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

. It also owns the

Trona Railway The Trona Railway is a short-line railroad owned by Searles Valley Minerals. The TRC interchanges with the Lone Pine Subdivision of the Union Pacific Railroad (former Southern Pacific Transportation Company) at Searles, California. History The ...

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

History

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

John Wemple Searles 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 (also called Slate Range Lake and Borax Lake), near the current town of Trona, San Bernardino County, Californi ...

arrived in the area in the 1860s, he was looking for gold and silver to mine. Instead he found a white crystalline powder,

, in the dry Searles Lake bed. Searles Valley Historical Society.org: Searles Valley History Timeline
/ref> 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 The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Railroad classes#Class I, Class I Rail transport, railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was oper ...

reached it in 1876. In 1895 The San Bernardino Borax Mining Company was sold by Searles to the

Pacific Coast Borax Company 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". History The roots of the Pacific Coast Borax Company lie in Mineral County, Nevada, east of ...

, owned by Francis "Borax King" Smith. He shut down production at the company's section of Searles Lake the next year.

American Trona Company

The American Trona Company was founded in 1913 by the British-owned

Consolidated Gold Fields Consolidated Gold Fields was a British gold-mining company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until it was acquired by Hanson in 1988. History Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa was fo ...

of South Africa company. In 1914 the company completed the

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. The production of

potash Potash ( ) includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water- soluble form.

began in 1915. 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.

Post-WW II

After

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, 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. In 1962 the company received nationwide recognition and an award for its innovative solvent extraction process to recover

and

potassium sulfate Potassium sulfate (US) or potassium sulphate (UK), also called sulphate of potash (SOP), arcanite, or archaically potash of sulfur, is the inorganic compound with formula K2SO4, a white water-soluble solid. It is commonly used in fertilizers, prov ...

from weak

brine Brine (or briny water) is a high-concentration solution of salt (typically sodium chloride or calcium chloride) in water. In diverse contexts, ''brine'' may refer to the salt solutions ranging from about 3.5% (a typical concentration of seawat ...

s. In 1974 American Potash and Chemical was acquired by

Kerr-McGee The Kerr-McGee Corporation, founded in 1929, was an American energy company involved in oil exploration, production of crude oil, natural gas, perchlorate and uranium mining and milling in various countries. On June 23, 2006, Anadarko Petroleu ...

. However they didn’t want to own the company town and sold it. They cut production in half in 1982 and instituted massive layoffs. 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. Ownership changed again in 1998 when

IMC Global IMC Global (also known as International Minerals and Chemical Corporation and Imcera) was a mining and production company, formerly listed on the S&P MidCap 400. It was founded in 1909 as International Agricultural Corporation. In 2004, IMC Glo ...

corporation acquired North American Chemical Company.

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. In November 2007, Karnavati Holdings, a subsidiary of the Indian corporation Nirma Limited based in

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ), also spelled Amdavad (), is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 ...

(India), purchased Searles Valley Minerals corporation from Sun Capital Partners. 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 Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities intensify the greenhouse effect. This contributes to climate change. Carbon dioxide (), from burning fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, oil, and natural gas, is the main cause of climate chan ...

by 18 percent between 2002 and 2012. As it operates on government owned land, Searles Valley Minerals Inc. pays

royalties A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or ...

of millions of dollars each year to both the federal and state governments. Much of those royalties cover the expenses of local school districts.

Argus Cogeneration Plant

The Argus Cogeneration Plant is a

coal-fired power station A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide there are about 2,500 coal-fired power stations, on average capable of generating a gigawatt each. They generate ...

located adjacent to the mineral processing plant in

Trona 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 ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. The power station has

nameplate capacity Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity, maximum effect or gross capacity,MW and produced 296

GWh A kilowatt-hour ( unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a non-SI unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules (MJ) in SI units, which is the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power for one hour. Kilowatt-hours are a commo ...

of electricity in 2018. It is the last coal-fired power station still operating in California. Unit 1 was commissioned in 1978 and has a nameplate capacity of 63 MW. Unit 2 was commissioned in January 1991 and had a nameplate capacity of 103 MW before ceasing operations on October 2, 2014. The power station is located at the coordinates .

Environmental problems

The

California Department of Fish and Wildlife The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), formerly known as the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), is an American state agency under the California Natural Resources Agency. The Department of Fish and Wildlife manages ...

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. There are allegations of arsenic poisoning of plant workers. 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. The

Searles Lake Searles Lake is an Endorheic basin, 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. The mining community of ...

is rich in arsenic, and a unique anaerobic, extremely haloalkaliphilic bacterium which uses arsenic for respiration has been isolated from the mud. 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.

References

External links

Official Searles Valley Minerals website
{{Authority control Power stations in California Chemical companies of the United States Mining companies of the United States Mining in California Searles Valley Companies based in Overland Park, Kansas Companies based in San Bernardino County, California Chemical companies established in 2004 Non-renewable resource companies established in 2004 2004 establishments in California Mojave Desert