Future stewardship of the BSF

[Polyhead]

.....I just can't trust anything creationists have to say.  but you are't one so I retract that statement.  The track record of them flat out lying is just puts them beyond trust.  They may  not be in this case, but i'm not willing to put any time into anything they have to say trying to work it out.....

I might not be a creationist but I respect their right to have their views.  I thought that was one of the great things about this country.  The fellow who wrote that article is in my view a very credible geologist on the subject at hand.  I see no difference in his interpretation of the history of Lake Bonneville than those of other geologists.

Hopefully you are never hurt on the salt but if that were the case and the ambulance was hauling you into SLC you might want to keep your views to yourself while receiving medical attention there.  Living in Utah I've always found those giving medical help to not be effected by what my views might be vs. theirs and the services they have rendered have left nothing to be desired on my part


Sumner

P.S. John thanks, but don't put any time into being P.O., I'm not 

See, and that's why I don't like them, because it's true.  They won't take very good care of people that don't fall in lock step with their view point.  If they find out I'm homosexual they are likely to let me die.  So you can see, I have a personal grudge against these people, and a very valid reason to have so.

[Polyhead]

....everything erodes....

Everything that erodes is also redeposited some place else  .  

I've also never read anyplace about the salt depth being anywhere near that thickness but like the others have said Lake Bonneville was that deep before it overflowed into what is now the Snake and cut a huge gorge out and emptied out a lot of that depth in a very short period of time.

In Salt Lake City as I look eastward, I see on the western side of the Wasatch Mountains an ancient wave-eroded bench 800 feet higher than the city. That widespread bench was formed by erosion at 5,050 feet above sea level. It marks the old shoreline ("bathtub ring") of ancient Lake Bonneville, the largest Ice Age lake to form within the Great Basin. This old lake was comparable in volume to Lake Michigan, and occupied almost 20,000 square miles in eastern Nevada, western Utah, and southern Idaho. The surface of Lake Bonneville was about one third of the area of Utah. This massive lake attained a maximum depth of 1,000 feet and was 800 feet deep over Salt Lake City. It

http://www.icr.org/article/red-rock-pass-spillway-bonneville-flood/

Sumner

A link to a creationist website... well, I can discredit anything you have to say from here on out.

Well I'm not a 'creationist' but the info about the Bonneville Lake does match up with most the geomorphology I've read about the lake.  As for the discrediting believe me my feelings won't be hurt in this instance,

Sumner

  Well it pisses me off that a newbe wanabe  like polymouth could discredit you after all the informative post you have contributed.

         JL222

    

being a newbie to this sport maybe, but geology is hardly something that's new to me.

[jl222]

.....I just can't trust anything creationists have to say.  but you are't one so I retract that statement.  The track record of them flat out lying is just puts them beyond trust.  They may  not be in this case, but i'm not willing to put any time into anything they have to say trying to work it out.....

I might not be a creationist but I respect their right to have their views.  I thought that was one of the great things about this country.  The fellow who wrote that article is in my view a very credible geologist on the subject at hand.  I see no difference in his interpretation of the history of Lake Bonneville than those of other geologists.

Hopefully you are never hurt on the salt but if that were the case and the ambulance was hauling you into SLC you might want to keep your views to yourself while receiving medical attention there.  Living in Utah I've always found those giving medical help to not be effected by what my views might be vs. theirs and the services they have rendered have left nothing to be desired on my part


Sumner

P.S. John thanks, but don't put any time into being P.O., I'm not 

See, and that's why I don't like them, because it's true.  They won't take very good care of people that don't fall in lock step with their view point.  If they find out I'm homosexual they are likely to let me die.  So you can see, I have a personal grudge against these people, and a very valid reason to have so.

 I knew your mouth wasn't as big as your 

 JL222

[JimL]

Some thoughts on the Utah salt, though I really don't know exactly how much and to where all the salt from BSF goes:

Obviously, the salt and potash are there on the surface, easily accessed, transportation avenues already built..... I expect that is what made so much removal practical from this particular area.  Most of the salt and related minerals are buried too deep, under much of Utah, for (currently) cost effective recovery.  

It seems to me, there are farther reaching conditions that have led to this.  The amount of salt needed in the mid-West, north-East, and Canada is staggering.  Without many millions of tons of salt, every winter, peoples work lives, their food and goods needs, and industry....would all be in strained.  Our hobby certainly doesn't count for much against the huge endeavor (supplied from many sources) of keeping two nations in transportation and commerce through the cold season.

This need for road salt (and mag-chloride in more recent times) has grown as fast as our countries and population.  Perhaps this has added to the rate of BSF depletion...I don't know.  During meetings with our Canadian group (when I was still in my career) we sat in on some impressive presentations about the scope of the winter need and the damage it causes to our cars.  (On a side note, this entire concept of maintaining operating wintertime economies was the indirect cause of the 5yr/50,000 mile rust-through warranty now required of all vehicle manufacturers.  Complicated...aint it?)  

There are a lot of reasons for this mining activity, and it affects a lot more lives than just the folks around Wendover.  It does seem to me that there are always more reasons for whatever happens, than can ever been known except in hindsight.  I hope the plans to preserve a racing surface can be a part of the result.  That sure sounds like a potential compromise.

Thinking about Utah salt (another side story, here), my wife and I were camped on some BLM land about 50 miles south of Delta, Utah, about 2 years ago.  We had a visit at our campsite by a patrol working for a nearby solar generating complex.  In the course of our visit, he told us about the giant salt caverns now being created under the farmlands around Delta.  He said the salt is over a thousand feet thick(?), under there.  The caverns are shaped out as huge, vertical, pressure vessels and linked by pipes to a formerly closed steam-turbine electrical generating plant.

He explained that the wind generating farms in Wyoming have proven too inconsistent to work well on the electrical grid.  They put up a dedicated line to bring the electricity from those Wyoming wind farms to the old coal-fired plant at Delta.  They use the electricity (when the wind blows) to run the generators backwards, compress air with the turbines, and stuff it into the "salt" pressure vessels under ground.  This allows other portions of the plant to use the compressed air, at steady rate, to support the local electrical grids.  

He said that wind farms will turn out to be a dead end except where this method can be used, and its efficiency is not good compared to solar.  It seemed to him to be a "salvage what they can" effort after building the wind farms.  I really don't know if the efficiency is good or bad.  Meanwhile, I was thinking about where all that salt might go, but it isn't near enough to fix our race track!

(a side-side-note to this)  A few months later, I found myself in a McDonalds late at night (Tehachapi, CA), visiting with a group of recently returned Afghanistan and Iraq vets.  They had just been let go from their (about 4-6 month) jobs with wind-farm energy companies.  It turns out that there is Fed money to support the wages (for certain time period) for hiring these fellows... OJT training so to speak.  When the companies have got their several months of free work, they lay the fellows off and get a new batch of ex-soldiers, on a new batch of taxpayer money.  These guys were at loose ends, down on their luck, and wondering where to go to find a job.  I was pretty stunned to see we haven't learned a d##n thing..... since I came home from Nam and got turned down by every car dealer in town, except the little Toyota dealer on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.

So many things, that get so complicated.   BLM is on the hot seat for a lot of land issues, for a lot of really important (but maybe not so obvious) reasons.  It is easy to forget that they were NOT chartered with only running a bunch of parks or recreation areas, but for trying to make land use be productive to national needs (perhaps, more in recent times, maintain some preservation of the ecology).   

I apologize if some of this seems off-topic, here, but I would guess there is an awful lot more to this (BSF issue and how to manage public land use) than what we see and hear.  I don't like to offer my opinions, these days, because I seem to have lived long enough to find out I don't know much.  

I do know the folks working on this problem are the best we could ever want, and I hope they know how much we appreciate them.

Thank you.


 

[hoss]

Good job, JimmyL.
 

[Polyhead]

.....I just can't trust anything creationists have to say.  but you are't one so I retract that statement.  The track record of them flat out lying is just puts them beyond trust.  They may  not be in this case, but i'm not willing to put any time into anything they have to say trying to work it out.....

I might not be a creationist but I respect their right to have their views.  I thought that was one of the great things about this country.  The fellow who wrote that article is in my view a very credible geologist on the subject at hand.  I see no difference in his interpretation of the history of Lake Bonneville than those of other geologists.

Hopefully you are never hurt on the salt but if that were the case and the ambulance was hauling you into SLC you might want to keep your views to yourself while receiving medical attention there.  Living in Utah I've always found those giving medical help to not be effected by what my views might be vs. theirs and the services they have rendered have left nothing to be desired on my part


Sumner

P.S. John thanks, but don't put any time into being P.O., I'm not 

See, and that's why I don't like them, because it's true.  They won't take very good care of people that don't fall in lock step with their view point.  If they find out I'm homosexual they are likely to let me die.  So you can see, I have a personal grudge against these people, and a very valid reason to have so.

 I knew your mouth wasn't as big as your 

 JL222

Hmmmmmmmmmmm, I dunno I get told it's tight but... you know... whatever.

[Polyhead]

Some thoughts on the Utah salt, though I really don't know exactly how much and to where all the salt from BSF goes:

Obviously, the salt and potash are there on the surface, easily accessed, transportation avenues already built..... I expect that is what made so much removal practical from this particular area.  Most of the salt and related minerals are buried too deep, under much of Utah, for (currently) cost effective recovery.  

It seems to me, there are farther reaching conditions that have led to this.  The amount of salt needed in the mid-West, north-East, and Canada is staggering.  Without many millions of tons of salt, every winter, peoples work lives, their food and goods needs, and industry....would all be in strained.  Our hobby certainly doesn't count for much against the huge endeavor (supplied from many sources) of keeping two nations in transportation and commerce through the cold season.

This need for road salt (and mag-chloride in more recent times) has grown as fast as our countries and population.  Perhaps this has added to the rate of BSF depletion...I don't know.  During meetings with our Canadian group (when I was still in my career) we sat in on some impressive presentations about the scope of the winter need and the damage it causes to our cars.  (On a side note, this entire concept of maintaining operating wintertime economies was the indirect cause of the 5yr/50,000 mile rust-through warranty now required of all vehicle manufacturers.  Complicated...aint it?)  

There are a lot of reasons for this mining activity, and it affects a lot more lives than just the folks around Wendover.  It does seem to me that there are always more reasons for whatever happens, than can ever been known except in hindsight.  I hope the plans to preserve a racing surface can be a part of the result.  That sure sounds like a potential compromise.

Thinking about Utah salt (another side story, here), my wife and I were camped on some BLM land about 50 miles south of Delta, Utah, about 2 years ago.  We had a visit at our campsite by a patrol working for a nearby solar generating complex.  In the course of our visit, he told us about the giant salt caverns now being created under the farmlands around Delta.  He said the salt is over a thousand feet thick(?), under there.  The caverns are shaped out as huge, vertical, pressure vessels and linked by pipes to a formerly closed steam-turbine electrical generating plant.

He explained that the wind generating farms in Wyoming have proven too inconsistent to work well on the electrical grid.  They put up a dedicated line to bring the electricity from those Wyoming wind farms to the old coal-fired plant at Delta.  They use the electricity (when the wind blows) to run the generators backwards, compress air with the turbines, and stuff it into the "salt" pressure vessels under ground.  This allows other portions of the plant to use the compressed air, at steady rate, to support the local electrical grids.  

He said that wind farms will turn out to be a dead end except where this method can be used, and its efficiency is not good compared to solar.  It seemed to him to be a "salvage what they can" effort after building the wind farms.  I really don't know if the efficiency is good or bad.  Meanwhile, I was thinking about where all that salt might go, but it isn't near enough to fix our race track!

(a side-side-note to this)  A few months later, I found myself in a McDonalds late at night (Tehachapi, CA), visiting with a group of recently returned Afghanistan and Iraq vets.  They had just been let go from their (about 4-6 month) jobs with wind-farm energy companies.  It turns out that there is Fed money to support the wages (for certain time period) for hiring these fellows... OJT training so to speak.  When the companies have got their several months of free work, they lay the fellows off and get a new batch of ex-soldiers, on a new batch of taxpayer money.  These guys were at loose ends, down on their luck, and wondering where to go to find a job.  I was pretty stunned to see we haven't learned a d##n thing..... since I came home from Nam and got turned down by every car dealer in town, except the little Toyota dealer on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.

So many things, that get so complicated.   BLM is on the hot seat for a lot of land issues, for a lot of really important (but maybe not so obvious) reasons.  It is easy to forget that they were NOT chartered with only running a bunch of parks or recreation areas, but for trying to make land use be productive to national needs (perhaps, more in recent times, maintain some preservation of the ecology).   

I apologize if some of this seems off-topic, here, but I would guess there is an awful lot more to this (BSF issue and how to manage public land use) than what we see and hear.  I don't like to offer my opinions, these days, because I seem to have lived long enough to find out I don't know much.  

I do know the folks working on this problem are the best we could ever want, and I hope they know how much we appreciate them.

Thank you.


 

goooood post.

I want to race out there... but then again, I mine.  I have my own little dredging operation that I do as a hobby.  Looking for the yellow metal that drives white men crazy.  I would hate to see an instance where americans were prevented from mining on federal grounds.  Rock hounding and mineral prospecting is pretty fun (if you're a huge nerd, and I am). Federal property is OUR property.  The government keeps it for us so that we can all share in it's resources.  Lets not forget that pleasure and solitude are resources that can be "mined" out of those properties.  There are other places to get salt.  Those cost more of course.  If the mine operators are playing by the rules, well then there isn't much you can say.  If they aren't playing by the rules, well, they shouldn't get a second chance, they should be shut down.

  In this case though, things seem lopsided in favor of the mines.  A real "money talks" situation.  Big mining operators have always had that luxury really.  That's not fair or right.  Maybe the BLM should start seeing that there are resources of value asside from the salt there.  Maybe someone in that area's management doesn't get that.  If the salt flats quit seeing racing because it's mined out it'll be yet another thing other nations will point and laugh at.  More ammunition in the fish barrel shoot up of america's pride.

[Dakin Engineering]

1,100 views and 50 votes.

The vast majority don't care if you ever make another pass on the Salt.

Message received.

[SPARKY]

doesn't the vote happen once but a view happen each click on

[ronnieroadster]

Possibly the many readers are being amused by polyheads postings rather than voting. Just my opinion.  
I voted .

[SPARKY]

P Head there is not suppose to be any federal property--read your history, read the Constitution--the states were supposed to get the property within their boundary  when they became states---that was decided when the War for Independence was going on; the Feds reneged on the western states.

[Polyhead]

P Head there is not suppose to be any federal property--read your history, read the Constitution--the states were supposed to get the property with in their boundary  when they became states---that was decided when the War for Independence was going on; the Feds reneged on the western states.

So your saying then there aren't federal grounds back east?

[hotrod]

There are only permissions in the constitution for the the Federal Government to hold very limited "needful" lands for things like forts and harbors, and of course the land reserved for Washington DC. They held all lands in the "Territories" until they became states but were understood to be obligated to divest their ownership of those lands after statehood was granted. Some of it was given away in the home stead system and a lot of land given to the rail roads and so called school sections which belong to the states, but after that the Federal Government just kind of forgot to finish the process. This has been an on going struggle between the Feds and the western states for over 100 years.

The Federal Government controls 48.1% of Wyoming, 64.9% of Utah, 84.9% of Nevada,43% of Arizona, 29% of Montana, 35.9% of Colorodo.
The control 0.3% of Connecticut, 1.1 % of Illinois, 1.7% of Indiana, 0.3% of Iowa, 0.5% of Iowa, 0.3% of New York

Does that seem a little unbalanced to you? Those eastern states can earn taxes on almost all their lands, the Western states almost none of their lands produce revenue from taxes. Our western states are so bound up in Federal ownership we are still treated as territories and are not really sovereign states in many respects. 

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf

Az inserted by Sparky

[salt27]

There are only permissions in the constitution for the the Federal Government to hold very limited "needful" lands for things like forts and harbors, and of course the land reserved for Washington DC. They held all lands in the "Territories" until they became states but were understood to be obligated to divest their ownership of those lands after statehood was granted. Some of it was given away in the home stead system and a lot of land given to the rail roads and so called school sections which belong to the states, but after that the Federal Government just kind of forgot to finish the process. This has been an on going struggle between the Feds and the western states for over 100 years.

The Federal Government controls 48.1% of Wyoming, 64.9% of Utah, 84.9% of Nevada,43% of Arizona, 29% of Montana, 35.9% of Colorodo.
The control 0.3% of Connecticut, 1.1 % of Illinois, 1.7% of Indiana, 0.3% of Iowa, 0.5% of Iowa, 0.3% of New York

Does that seem a little unbalanced to you? Those eastern states can earn taxes on almost all their lands, the Western states almost none of their lands produce revenue from taxes. Our western states are so bound up in Federal ownership we are still treated as territories and are not really sovereign states in many respects. 

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf

Az inserted by Sparky

I believe 53.1 percent of Oregon although a certain wildlife refuge was in question for a while.

[SPARKY]

LOL!!!!!!!