Looks like 2024, at the earliest.[0] The relative speed to production is largely due to the fact that they're just refining the waste stream from already established geothermal power plants. As the old saying goes, "one power plant's trash is another refiner's treasure".
I'm guessing that will never happen. This is not the first time people have proposed mining it.
One problem is that, even without mining, it's on track to poising the air of something like 33% of the Los Angelos metropolitan area in the next few decades. So, anyone that touches it will now own that environmental disaster.
This can, and should, be fixed by spending huge amounts of federal money on environmental remediation, and I can imagine using lithium revenues to offset it, but none of that will be politically easy.
I'm not sure if this comment is sarcasm or not? But it would get saltier as time goes on. Seawater goes in, water evaporates out. There is more salt at that point . But that is fine. Hypersaline lakes are everywhere. As long as they are kept wet it isn't a big deal.
The lake is currently more saline than seawater, so adding more seawater would dilute it. True, over time it would get saltier as the water in the seawater evaporates out. But then just add more seawater to dilute more haha...
[0] https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2022/05/13/lithium-vall...