The Great Salt Lake isn’t an obvious place to develop a lithium mine. Here on the Great Salt Lake? “It’s 70 parts per million,” Raef Sully, Lilac’s Australia-born chief executive, tells me. But it depends on its connection to the Great Salt Lake via that lengthy hose. Hardened salt and impurities are encrusted on metal mesh that keeps larger materials out of Lilac’s water intake system.