The Desert Sun‘s investigation into Comite Civico Del Valle’s dealings with Controlled Thermal Resources was a significant piece of regional journalism. It documented, specifically, that Luis Olmedo — CCV’s Executive Director — demanded $83 million from CTR as the price of dropping CEQA-based opposition to CTR’s geothermal lithium extraction project in the Salton Sea region.
CTR is developing exactly the kind of project that Imperial Valley needs: domestic lithium extraction from geothermal brine, integrated with clean energy production, in a region that has been waiting for decades to convert its geothermal resources into economic diversification. The “Lithium Valley” narrative that has attracted significant state and federal attention depends on projects like CTR actually getting built.
The $83 million demand does not appear to have been about lithium extraction’s environmental impacts. It appears to have been about the financial value of CCV’s ability to threaten those impacts through CEQA litigation. Eighty-three million dollars is not a mitigation cost. It is a toll.
Connecting the Dots to the IVDC
The IVCM federal complaint alleges that the same model — organized CEQA opposition designed to create settlement leverage — was coordinated against the Imperial Valley Data Center, and that the coordination involved both Katherine Burnworth and CCV. The allegation is that Burnworth worked to force the project into a CEQA process it was legally exempt from specifically to create the leverage that a settlement demand would require.
The February 10 Superior Court ruling that the city’s legal theory was “legally insufficient” disrupted this strategy at the threshold level. Without the CUP requirement, there is no CEQA trigger. Without the CEQA trigger, there is no litigation threat. Without the litigation threat, there is no settlement leverage. The court ruling did not just validate the project’s approval — it may have effectively eliminated the financial mechanism the opposition coalition was depending on.
The Pattern That Should Concern Imperial Valley
The $83 million demand on CTR is documented. The allegation of coordinated CEQA-based opposition to the IVDC is in a federal complaint. If both are accurate, the pattern is clear: major development projects in Imperial Valley’s energy and technology sectors are facing coordinated opposition that uses CEQA litigation as a financial extraction tool rather than an environmental protection mechanism.
Lithium Valley and data center development are the two largest economic opportunities currently visible in Imperial Valley’s future. If both are subject to organized greenmail campaigns, the effective tax on development in the region rises substantially. That tax is paid first by developers who adjust their site selection decisions, and ultimately by the workers who never get hired because the projects that would have employed them never got built.
What the Community Should Demand
Luis Olmedo has the right to lead the organization he leads. He has the right to use legal tools that are available to him. He does not have the right to represent his activities as environmental protection when the documented evidence suggests they are financial extraction. The community he claims to represent deserves the honest version of both narratives.
The honest version includes: CCV has done real environmental health work in Imperial Valley. It has also, according to documented reporting, demanded $83 million from a clean energy developer. It has also, according to a federal complaint, been named as a participant in a coordinated campaign to create CEQA leverage against the region’s largest job-creating project.
These facts can coexist. The community’s job is to hold them together and make its own judgments — which means insisting on access to all of the relevant facts, not just the ones that support a predetermined conclusion.