Saving the Salt

[Ron Gibson]

  I'm depressed. Not because the meet was cancelled, that's mother Nature and just makes me unhappy, but as I see it and have seen it going, the salt is GONE. There were exceptional spring rains this year, which in my estimation dissolved  most of the remaining surface salt/minerals layer and iNTREPID promptly pumped that brine into their ponds. And that has been happening for decades. Fresh water rains dissolving surface salt and pumped away. Salt GONE.
  Has  anyone done a survey of the altitude of the salt? If there are inches and inches of mud washed down from the hills every year, it should change the topography of the salt by a measurable amount.
  How can any thing be restored when it was hauled away at a rate of 300,000 tons  year. It is GONE.
  Has any of the mining company's increased their pumping or pond capacity in the past 25 years? That would have increased the rate of destruction of the racecourse. I can see the mining company's saying to themselves,"Hey, if they are going to try to shut us down, then we'll get all we can in the meantime."
  When they first started racing on it and described the salt as feet thick, I think they were talking about the upper crust as feet thick not the layers of salt and sediment underneath as the mining co's are. When several people were setting records for 24 hour endurance and speed on 20 mile circular tracks, I can guarantee you that the salt was more than the paltry few inches or fractions thereof we have been running on.

Ron

[ATS, Inc]

Just talked to JoAnn at SCTA. She said that if I want to donate my entry fee to the SCTA I will need to return my refund check to them. By law they have to send me my refund, but I can send it right back as a donation. The way that I see it, that money is already spent. Thanks for all you guys do, and with my donation, hopefully, I'll see you on the salt next year!
None Run Out!
Maybe next year.....

[Sumner]

.... There were exceptional spring rains this year, which in my estimation dissolved  most of the remaining surface salt/minerals layer and iNTREPID promptly pumped that brine into their ponds. And that has been happening for decades. Fresh water rains dissolving surface salt and pumped away. Salt GONE....

I like everyone else hopes that somehow the mining of the salt stops, but I don't feel the current conditions were cause in just one year.  It is normal for the salt to be under water almost every winter spring and a number of years you couldn't get on the salt to June or so.  With that being the case all of the salt wasn't pumped away in just this last year.

I remember a couple years of rain-outs in the 90's although I also heard one of those rain-outs was not actually rain but storm clouds in SCTA that caused the meet not to happen.  I also remember the salt getting so bad that most of the cars without suspension couldn't run and it was hard to find a long course.  At that point I gave up thoughts of building a car as I thought racing would come to a halt.  

Then the salt lay-down operations started and the salt got better again and since that time there have been a lot of good years.  I agree that the salt has gotten thinner and mining of it should be halted but believe that this year an unusual set of circumstances have caused the current problems and that by this time next year we might be good to go again and hopefully yet this fall possibly but it might take a winter to heal some of what has happened.  Let's remember that last year the problem was just rain and water on the salt and if it would of stopped raining and dried out we would of had tracks to run on.  With that in mind I'm optimistic still for the future but we need to support those who are trying to save the salt,

Sum

[Bob Drury]

  Neil, I have many great memories of  the Victory at Sea weekly show watching it on My Parents first B&W T.V. set.  I still have Long Play Records they bought for me (or was it Santa?) of Richard Rodgers wonderful Music that seemed to flow with the action footage.  It began my lifetime love of Classical Music (don't freak out Stainless, I love Pink Floyd, George Jones and watch RFD TV on Saturday nights.... even the Dodge Polka Party stuff).
  I am, after all, a Wild and Crazy Sort of Guy.                                     One Run, out...........................

[hotrod]

Sum your comments about removing 300,000 tons of salt a year got me to thinking.
One of my college professors in mechanical engineering always stressed the concept of doing some ball park calculations to get a idea of the magnitude of the problem before you worried about a detailed answer. (this was when you did calculations on a slide rule so you better have a good idea how big the final answer should be or you could easily be off by a factor of 10 or 100 on the slide rule)

With that in mind I did some ball park calculations assuming that all that salt came off the top crust of the salt here is what the ball park calculations say:

300,000 tons of salt /year = 21205732500 cubic inches per year
That would be a cube of salt 2767.9 inches on a side  or 230 ft per side cube comes off the flats each year.
If you assume that is being extracted from a salt crust of 36 square miles:
That would remove about 0.1467 inches of salt each year.
Since in 66 years of extraction ( ie since the first salt flat meets were held in 1949) at current production rates they would have extracted about 9.68 inches of salt across an area of 36 square miles.

Not saying that is an exact value only a representative back of the envelope calculation of the probable impact of the mining at current rates with no salt replacement. If that is ball park, since 2006 when I first started doing photography out on the salt it likely lost an equivalent of about 1.3 inches of thickness.

In fairness that did not all come from the surface, but it had to come from the volume of the salt so the entire basin of 36 miles would have dropped 1.3 inches as that salt got pulled away. If the water table did not change then the local water table in the basin is now 1.3 inches higher in relation to the surface than it was just 9 years ago.

Maybe the top salt crust is nearly the same as it was in 2006 but due to the higher water table it would be more difficult for it to fully dry in the summer months. The basin is a fixed sized bowl, you take stuff out the top MUST sink (its that old conservation of mass thing).

We are not talking about just changes in the salt crust (top hard cemented halite crust) but the entire salt deposit and its relationship to the normal water table in the basin. We not only need to monitor the thickness of that top hard salt crust but the relationship it has to the local brine pool water table.

It has crossed my mind that by moving the salt as brine they may be raising the local water table (they are taking brine from deep wells not just the surface brine pool). Although they might be transferring lots of salt they could also be raising the water table which would be counter productive to the objective or restoring a hard surface salt deposit to preserve the historic use of the salt flats as a racing surface.

About that dry salt laydown project

[Sumner]

Sum your comments about removing 300,000 tons of salt a year got me to thinking......

I wasn't the one who brought that up  ,

Sum

[Sumner]

I think the current problem with the salt is not extraction but what was laid out in that article ( http://fox13now.com/2015/07/21/layers-of-mud-at-bonneville-salt-flats-forces-speed-week-organizers-to-cancel-event/  ) that was linked to in the post by Texican...

Last year, there was standing water on the flats. This year, the flats appear to be dry at first glance, but in many places there are layers of mud just under the surface.

A layer of mud recently got stirred up by those prepping the four salt tracks where 600 cars were set to race starting Aug. 8.

“We have a slight crust of salt on the surface, we have anywhere from a half an inch to an inch of silt, and then we have hard salt again,” said Mike Crawford, mayor of Wendover, Utah.

Latin thinks heavy rainfall in the mountains near the flats, washed soil onto the salt flats in the past year, creating the problem areas.

It is just a bad year and we will probably have to wait out mother nature on this one,

Sum

[petercalaguiro]

Not my story to modify...I am just posting an article from the paper.

[Bob Drury]

  Sum, as you know, I have admired your well spoken and researched posts for years.  I also applaud your work in providing invaluable charts and formulas which I refer back too periodically (purplesagetradingpost.com) as do many others. And while I agree with your current assessment in general, I believe  your optimistic statement about "good years since pumping began" NOT to be inaccurate but leaving out one important fact.
  The Shut Down area on the Long Coarse has become more dangerous for Streamliners or any 300+ mph vehicles.  If they can't stop by the seven mile, they are in great danger of destroying their Race Vehicles even if they don't crash.  
  As We are seeing more and more Streamliners and Bikes (yikes!) running near or over 400 mph and some with the potential and goal of 500+ mph it has become imperative that We have a longer shut down area as some of these twin engine vehicles weigh upwards of 5 tons.
  Even lighter vehicles (Speed Demon, et al) if for whatever reason such as chute loss by fire are in peril in this type of situation.
  As far as healing of the salt goes, and given the news per Dan's recent post that most of the area is dirt mixed with salt (sorry, I am not smart enough to add Quotes and am paraphrasing and probably inaccurately at that) so I fear that at the very least we most likely will not be running on white salt or on a consistent surface from start to finish in the near future.  I hope I am wrong,
                                                     With deep respect for You , Bob

[Ron Gibson]

  I don't know how much rain they got on the salt or how the 15 to 18 percent is figured ( weight or volume ). If it is by volume and they got 6" of rain, then approx. 1" of salt could be dissolved and pumped away. At WOS last year I'm not sure there was 1" of "solid" salt most places.
  With the piles of materials at Intrepid, it's like someone standing on the top of Mount Everest asking "Where did the mountain go ?"
  Supposedly the rain dissolved the salt and it migrated down into the lower layers. The lower layer ground water has to be 100% saturated already due to the mineral layers and physics says two objects can't occupy the same space. If rain can do that, I'm really surprised it hasn't went away in the last 15000 years instead of just when they started mining. Salt is physical mass. It is impossible for it to just go away.
  If I dissolve salt in water in a jar and let the water evaporate the same amount of salt as I started with will be left in the jar. Maybe different form, but same amount.
  The BLM says Intrepid pumped 9.8 million tons back to the flats. Is that brine or salt? Big difference.

Ron
  

[hotrod]

In chemistry they generally use mass ratio unless they specifically specify some other (at least that is my understanding) so yes 15%-18% salt my mass would be my assumption. So that would imply that pumping 9.8 million tons of brine would have returned something on the order of 1.4 - 1.76 million tons of salt.


Just to extend my comment above a bit. If my conjecture is true that we really need to monitor 3 things to determine what is going on with the flats.

1 Thickness of the dense cemented halite hard top surface crust of salt.
2 The subsidence (if any) of the general basin surface due to mass extraction from the deep salt deposit.
3 The local ground water level in the surface brine pool that saturates the lower portions of the salt deposit.

Even if the top crust is not changed at all if the general basin surface subsides and or the local ground water level is increased due to pumping, the net effect is the same, salt crust top layer is too wet to support vehicles and race on.

A forth factor is probably also useful at least periodically and that is silt wash down into the basin by major rain events, (as happened this last year) and wind blown sedimentation with silt due to prolonged dry wind events as happened in recent years turning the salt brown due to the high silt deposition rates from wind storms.

In time that flood debris silt and the wind blown silt will migrate to the mud layer and fall out of the upper salt crust but that may take a year or more.

[hotrod]

I believe the 60 number is correct (it is what is in the article) but is probably referring to the planned test and tune in July as is specifically says "before speedweek)

More than 60 speed junkies had planned to converge on the salt flats to test their racing equipment in advance of next month's Speed Week — one of the racing community's most anticipated annual events.

[Bob Drury]

  Hey, You encroaching Moniker cur (that's my dog speaking, not me)  I encouraged others in a much earlier post to donate one half of their returned pre entry to STS, which I still support but somewhat waver on at this moment (waiting to hear their plan) but that is not the point. I salute your "upping the ante" but I also want to encourage EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US TO DONATE TO THIS SITE, which Slim and Nancy own and pay for.  
  We all need to realize or remember that before this site was founded by famous and current "World Traveler" Jon Amo, those of us not members of BNI or SCTA had no up to date information including rule changes unless you somehow obtained a current Rule Book.  If you were building a new Race Vehicle or were a Rookie, you might show up at Speedweek and not make it through Inspection.
  For all the Highs and Lows, the Good and Bads, the really crazies (Think Propster), the unbearable ranters (ahem, that might include Myself) This site has allowed each and every one of Us to seek advice and debate issues and even effect proposed rule changes.
  Please, on behalf of National Public Radio......... oh, wrong promo...............  do  go to the site Home Page (and they do take Visa) and keep this site alive.
                                                                                                    One Run Bob, out...........................

[Gman]

Sum your comments about removing 300,000 tons of salt a year got me to thinking.
One of my college professors in mechanical engineering always stressed the concept of doing some ball park calculations to get a idea of the magnitude of the problem before you worried about a detailed answer. (this was when you did calculations on a slide rule so you better have a good idea how big the final answer should be or you could easily be off by a factor of 10 or 100 on the slide rule)

With that in mind I did some ball park calculations assuming that all that salt came off the top crust of the salt here is what the ball park calculations say:

300,000 tons of salt /year = 21205732500 cubic inches per year
That would be a cube of salt 2767.9 inches on a side  or 230 ft per side cube comes off the flats each year.
If you assume that is being extracted from a salt crust of 36 square miles:
That would remove about 0.1467 inches of salt each year.
Since in 66 years of extraction ( ie since the first salt flat meets were held in 1949) at current production rates they would have extracted about 9.68 inches of salt across an area of 36 square miles.

Not saying that is an exact value only a representative back of the envelope calculation of the probable impact of the mining at current rates with no salt replacement. If that is ball park, since 2006 when I first started doing photography out on the salt it likely lost an equivalent of about 1.3 inches of thickness.

In fairness that did not all come from the surface, but it had to come from the volume of the salt so the entire basin of 36 miles would have dropped 1.3 inches as that salt got pulled away. If the water table did not change then the local water table in the basin is now 1.3 inches higher in relation to the surface than it was just 9 years ago.

Maybe the top salt crust is nearly the same as it was in 2006 but due to the higher water table it would be more difficult for it to fully dry in the summer months. The basin is a fixed sized bowl, you take stuff out the top MUST sink (its that old conservation of mass thing).

We are not talking about just changes in the salt crust (top hard cemented halite crust) but the entire salt deposit and its relationship to the normal water table in the basin. We not only need to monitor the thickness of that top hard salt crust but the relationship it has to the local brine pool water table.

It has crossed my mind that by moving the salt as brine they may be raising the local water table (they are taking brine from deep wells not just the surface brine pool). Although they might be transferring lots of salt they could also be raising the water table which would be counter productive to the objective or restoring a hard surface salt deposit to preserve the historic use of the salt flats as a racing surface.

About that dry salt laydown project

Larry , I thought the article said they removed 4.4 Million tons annually.  I could be wrong, ive read so much lately that I dont remember where I saw it

[Sumner]

.... I believe  your optimistic statement about "good years since pumping began" NOT to be inaccurate but leaving out one important fact....

I agree that the mining of the salt has decreased the racing surface and that it needs to stop.  Also when the salt got better after the bad period in the 90's that might or might not of been related to the salt that was pumped back.  Regardless of if that is the case I am glad that at least some salt was returned to the flats even if it wasn't the exact same composition as that taken.

The point I'm trying to make is that the current situation with the mud on and in the salt, not what has been under it all along is a recent phenomenon that has probably happened before and doesn't have anything to do with the salt that was removed by mining over the past 12 months.  We need to remember that even the past 100 years of cars on the salt is less than an eye blink in geological time and that the salt has been dissolved to some point almost every winter and then redeposited as the water evaporated every summer for as long as it has been there.

One last comment related to the international course.  One interesting thing about the use of this course over the years that Cook has run his meet is that both ends of it have ended or been run over ground with no or very little salt which as you mentioned is not good, but let's also remember that in years past anytime you got into an area like that you sunk out of sight and couldn't run on it.  I think we are seeing the salt flats turn into a dry lake bed, not that I like that but cars can now run on thinner salt or no salt where 20 years ago they would of sunk into the mud,

Sum