I totally agree that Joe Public has no knowledge of the real situation at Bonneville.
Due to the fact I still have an accent after all these years, I am always being asked what brought me to the US & my answer is racing at The Bonneville Salt Flats. There are very few of these people that don't know what that's all about & some have heard there "Was" a problem for a couple of years but none of them know the real situation.
Example: Saturday I go out on a Good Sam service call to a million dollar motor home with a landing gear problem. It's two elderly sisters out of Texas with their driver who stays in the Class B that is towed behind & as usual, ten minutes later I get "the question".
These old girls had been around horses all there lives & don't even drive but had visited the salt three days before because they knew about it's racing history & wanted to see it. They stopped at the viewing area on I-80 & watched a foreign tourist trying to dig up a souvenir with a spoon & said it was like trying to dig up "ce-ment"! I explained the real situation to them & the fact that the only salt like that north of the freeway is inside the dyke & nothing like the racing area today. They were disappointed to hear the BLM has mismanaged it to the point of depletion for the almighty dollar & that they continue to lie about the facts.
In this time of the social media boom there must be ways to light a fire under Joe Public's a$$ to make some more noise. What is left of Bonneville right now as a racing surface is junk, this is all about there actually being any kind of future.
Ironically after many years of building & crewing cars for other's, I am about ready to run my own 4WD AA/BFS but due to the loss of Bonneville will likely have to find my way back to Australia to see it's potential. It's not just about running a liner, it's about running a liner at Bonneville.
Sid.