For mineral extraction companies, environmental groups and supply chain executives, Utah’s House Bill 453 that passed in 2024 broke new ground — and not only because it put restrictions on the Great Salt Lake’s water level depletion by mining it for the first time.
Among other high-level goals, the law was one of the first in the country to outline regulations for how a company could operate if they were pulling lithium from the lake. Media framing was consistent: Despite Utah being considered pro-business, the lake’s dangerously low water levels drew a red line for lawmakers.
The bill included a key restriction: The common mining method of evaporation, which expends large amounts of water to concentrate minerals, would not be allowed. For one company, this was a key opportunity that paid off in early January of 2026.
The proposal
Jake Alexander, a geologist previously with the Utah Geological Survey, took on a newly created position as mineral operations manager, specifically overseeing companies’ filings for mining for the state’s Forestry, Fire and State Lands (FFSL) division, part of the Department of Natural Resources.
For several years, the state of the lake had been perilous. The historic low water levels — with conditions so poor that they are visible from space — were in part due to heavy use of evaporation pools to extract minerals like salt and magnesium.
A proposal from Lilac Solutions, an Oakland, California-based company that aims to use a new method of extracting lithium while creating minimal impact on the surrounding environment, became a significant focus for Alexander’s new role throughout 2025. His team had to discuss the plan with outside experts and build guardrails to balance between the industrial benefit of domestically sourced minerals and the dangerously low water levels harming the ecosystem of the lake.
“The idea here is we can have something that is non-evaporative, non-depletive, in the sense that they’re not really affecting water levels, but you’re pulling out a valuable mineral that can benefit the state, the country, the people of Utah,” says Alexander. “If there’s a way to do that together, that’s something we really want to encourage. And that’s kind of how the process fits through it. It’s a multi-step process, and they are the first ones to go through it.”
How Lilac won over investors and regulators
As electric vehicles have taken off globally and the need for lithium in battery manufacturing has increased in the electronics market, the Great Salt Lake provided an opportunity for mining companies with lithium deposits in the brine, potentially proving to be profitable. At the same time, ion exchange technology, which had long been used to separate chemicals, was being developed for a new application: to extract lithium from surface water.
This new approach, referred to as direct lithium extraction (DLE), has been framed as a novel strategy that could ensure a lower impact on environments and much less water loss than traditional lithium mining, which is often based on long-term evaporation methods.
“Lilac’s one of the earlier DLE technology companies. We have an ion-exchange-based technology that is an in-house proprietary; we manufacture our own ion-exchange here in the U.S.,” says Mark Mulligan, VP of engineering & projects at Lilac Solutions. “It’s an exciting growth area for the industry and will help unlock a lot of the resources that have not been traditionally able to be unlocked in a sustainable manner.”
The company was founded in 2016, and raised $300 million from a range of investors. They implemented a pilot program at the Great Salt Lake to demonstrate their process, which has satisfied regulators and investors, allowing them to move forward with a full facility. The first phase they’re implementing at the lake will pull 5,000 tons annually of lithium carbonate equivalent, which will be produced for battery manufacturing.
On January 12, Lilac announced they entered an agreement with Trayxs North America, which will be buying 50,000 tonnes of lithium from the company over a 10-year period.
“[We’re] continuing to advance and commercialize the technology from the earliest days when it was bench-top in the university through to really a self-standing company,” Mulligan says.
Mulligan says they chose Utah because the company has a U.S.-based technology and they manufacture some of their most crucial parts in Nevada, so they wanted to operate this project domestically, and they are confident they can extract high levels of lithium from the lake. Another factor for them was that Utah is considered a business-friendly state.
Lithium’s relevance on the global stage has exploded. Between artificial intelligence and data centers requiring large amounts of energy, the continued growth of the EV market, and an increased need for battery-powered utilities, Mulligan says the need for lithium will only grow in the years to come.
In countries like Argentina and Chile, evaporation-based extraction is common and leading to high-profile fights about ecosystem degradation as the mineral has become a key piece of energy transition practices. Meanwhile, Utah has used frameworks like HB 453 to entice new businesses that can make a profit both in and for the state while prioritizing sustainability.
The proposal hinges on a key turning point for the Great Salt Lake. Lilac’s DLE process suggests that lithium can be pulled out in a way that avoids losing water and maintaining the ecosystem, a claim that has won the support of outside experts like Westminster University biology professor Bonnie Baxter, who worked with Lilac to review their ecosystem impact.
“Their feasibility assessment essentially says there were limited potential impacts,” says Alexander. “Most of it was based around how they are going to account for some of the small water depletions that happen, but they’re not using evaporation.”
For Rob Dubuc, the general counsel of Friends of Great Salt Lake, environmentalists have noticed that the company has spent considerable time answering their questions and making efforts towards transparency in their claims. While he says the results of an expanded project remain to be seen, he expressed optimism about the technology and its potential.
“When it comes to these new extractive industries, like lithium extraction, seeing a company come in that uses a new technology that is largely non-consumptive when it comes to water and non-intrusive when it comes to the lake not occupying tens of thousands of acres in evaporative ponds in order to extract the resource, we’re just not opposed to that,” Dubuc says. “We think that that is a step in the right direction when it comes to this industry.”