Bonneville Salt Flats -- saved in nick of time

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Aug 16, 2007 | by Ray Grass Deseret Morning News

You would never know, standing on the white bed of salt on Bonneville today, that the world came within inches of losing this national treasure.

Imagine, what all the drivers and owners would do in their spare time if they didn't have engines to bore, cams to grind, carburetors to adjust and clutches to replace.

What about all those movies, including the rush to safety in "Independence Day" and all those TV ads.

It has been reported that since the late 1980s, scenes in at least 10 movies, 20 television programs and more than 30 commercials have been shot on the salt.

Then think of all the people who would no longer be able to stop at the end of the access road, look out over the white flats and have that rare opportunity to actually see the curvature of the Earth. The Salt Flats are that flat.

In the end it was not nature that saved the salt, but cooperation between users and industry.

The Salt Flats are remnants of the Great Salt Lake, which itself was part of the once-great Lake Bonneville. Evaporating water left behind minerals, most noticeably white salt on flat ground.

The natural recovery starts with snow and rain in the winter and spring, coating the flats with water. As summer heat and winds dry up the water, a new track -- smoothed flat by the action of the water and with a new surface -- remains for tourists and racers.

But then people started to see not salt but dirt patches appearing. Where once the salt was several feet thick, there was a time when there were areas of no salt.

Concern for the salt actually started back in 1975. After a series of BLM studies, the Salt Flats was placed on a list of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern and on the register of National Historical Sites.

In 1988, it was pointed out that there were large areas of buckling and cracking on the racetrack. About that time, various racing groups came together to start a "Save the Salt" program.

No one knows for sure where the salt was going. At least some of it, however, was being leached off the surface by the mineral farming of a nearby company.

In order to save the salt, a five-year plan was contrived. The farming company, interested only in potash and magnesium chloride, had tons of salt stockpiled. Over the winter, this salt was mixed with water and pumped back onto the flats. The additional salt gave nature a helping hand.

Pumping started in November of 1997. The pump pulled 7,000 gallons of brine per minute from unused settling ponds and pumped it into the canal that delivered the salt water to the flats.

Early calculations came up with a figure that this water/salt solution would put an additional half an inch of salt a year over a 28-square-mile area.

In order to stabilize the track, it was determined about seven inches of salt was needed. The company figured it had enough salt to put 10 new inches down.

Well, it worked. Standing on the salt bed this past week proved it. The only brown spot visible over the white bed at the start line was a candy wrapper.

E-mail: grass@desnews.com