Ivanpah Lake is a

dry lake bed A dry lake bed, also known as a playa, is a basin or depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappears when evaporation processes exceeds recharge. If the floor of a dry lake is covered by deposits of alkaline c ...

in the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in ...

San Bernardino County, California San Bernardino County (), officially the County of San Bernardino, is a County (United States), county located in the Southern California, southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is located within the Inland Empire area. As of the ...

on the border of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

. Nestled in the

Ivanpah Valley The Ivanpah Valley is in southeastern California and southern Nevada in the United States. The valley is between the New York Mountains and the Ivanpah Mountains in San Bernardino County on the California side, and in Clark County on the Nevada ...

near Primm on

Interstate 15 Interstate 15 (I-15) is a major Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway in the western United States, running through Southern California and the Intermountain West. I-15 begins near the Mexico–United States border, Mexican border i ...

, the lake is almost entirely within California. At the north edge of the lake lie the Nevada Welcome Center (closed) and a

California Lottery The California State Lottery began in October 1985 after voters authorized it in Proposition 37, the California State Lottery Act of 1984. It offers a range of games including number draws, scratchcards and a mock horse race. The earnings provi ...

retailer. It is a popular place for

land sailing Land sailing, also known as sand yachting, land yachting or dirtboating, is the act of moving across land in a wheeled vehicle powered by wind through the use of a sail. The term comes from analogy with (water) sailing. Historically, land saili ...

and

kite buggying A kite buggy is a light, purpose-built vehicle powered by a traction kite (power kite). It is single-seated and has one steerable front wheel and two fixed rear wheels. The driver sits in the seat located in the middle of the vehicle and accelera ...

On March 26, 2009, the world land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle was set here by the

Greenbird ''Greenbird'' is a wind-powered vehicle that broke the land speed record for sail-powered vehicles at the dry Ivanpah Lake on March 26, 2009. It was built by the British engineer Richard Jenkins. ''Greenbird'' reached a peak speed of 126.1 m ...

, clocked at .

Environmental contamination

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water carrying radioactive waste from rare earth element mining spilled into and around

Ivanpah Dry Lake Ivanpah Lake is a dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, California on the border of California and Nevada. Nestled in the Ivanpah Valley near Primm on Interstate 15, the lake is almost entirely within California. At the no ...

.Lisa Margonelli
Clean Energy's Dirty Little Secret
"The Atlantic", May 2009. In the 1980s, the

Mountain Pass rare earth mine The Mountain Pass Mine, owned by MP Materials, is an open-pit mine of rare-earth elements on the south flank of the Clark Mountain Range in California, southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2020 the mine supplied 15.8% of the world's rare-earth p ...

began piping wastewater as far as 14 miles to evaporation ponds on or near Ivanpah Dry Lake, east of Interstate 15 near Nevada. This pipeline repeatedly ruptured during cleaning operations to remove mineral deposits called scale. The scale is radioactive because of the presence of

thorium Thorium is a weakly radioactive metallic chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is silvery and tarnishes black when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft and malleable and has a high me ...

and

radium Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather t ...

, which occur naturally in the rare earth ore. A federal investigation later found that some 60 spills—some unreported—occurred between 1984 and 1998, when the pipeline was shut down. In all, about of radiological and other hazardous waste flowed onto the desert floor, according to federal authorities. By the end of the 1990s,

Unocal Union Oil Company of California, and its holding company Unocal Corporation, together known as Unocal was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the early 21st century. It was headqu ...

had been hit with a cleanup order and a San Bernardino County district attorney's lawsuit. The company paid more than $1.4 million in fines and settlements. After preparing a cleanup plan and completing an extensive environmental study, Unocal in 2004 won approval of a county permit that allowed the mine to operate for another 30 years. In 2008, Unocal/Chevron sold the mine to privately held Molycorp Minerals LLC, a company formed to revive the Mountain Pass Mine.

References

External links

*
Satellite Photo (Google Maps)

including access information {{authority control Ivanpah Valley Endorheic lakes of California Lakes of the Mojave Desert Lakes of San Bernardino County, California Lakes of California Lakes of Southern California

Environmental contamination

See also

References

External links