Saving the Salt

[Stan Back]

Sentimental ol' me -- I'd rather see the salt flats survive, even if we lost access.

[fredvance]

I'm with you Stan!

[Dakin Engineering]

Stan,
 I agree.

Sam
#6062

[BHR301]

I have to agree with you Stan.

Bill

[maj]

I was thinking more like adjoining the intrepid ponds where its servicable with existing structure rather than putting banks all over the flats
even if we do have to stop racing there sometime nothing is ever going to erase the history of the area , and i agree too Stan
like everyone else who has had the chance to stand out there and marvel at the whole stark beauty

[DND]

If you are a gearhead at all, and standing out on the salt does not move you you are not alive and you better check your ticker

[rickyracer]

JON - I noticed there are 25x the number of views on this thread than the petition thread so I am also posting similar comment here to try and get the numbers up:

I am sure we are all concerned we have got less than 750 votes on the "We the People" White House petition and a quarter of the time to the deadline has elapsed, with the target as 100,000 votes?

With typically over 500 entries at Speed Week surely each entry could email 5 family or crew members who have their own email address and would wish to support the petition.
Then those crew members have family too - and so on?

Not suggesting we can achieve a chain letter but this may be a one-off chance that, in hindsight, people who didn't vote or didn't even know of the petition ( more likely ) may regret as a lost opportunity...........

Here is the link again, and those who are not resident in USA just leave out the zip code. Don't forget you have to verify/confirm when you get the security check response.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-mining-bonneville-salt-flats-0

Richard

[tauruck]

I'm surprised we have so few votes!. There must be more than 750 members here who care?.

Any way of contacting all the guys with a PM or something?.

[stuartg@sema.org]

The Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials (BMST) 2015 were CANCELLED due to conditions on the salt flats. However, several other events are still scheduled for September and October if conditions improve. For more information:
http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/?u=cf2344ee733393889dc8b3d39&id=a8ca7e547c
http://www.savethesalt.org/current-events.html
_______________________________________

I'm also taking this opportunity to repost my August 12, 2015 entry on collective efforts to draft a reclamation plan to begin restoring Bonneville:
 
[Aug. 12, 2015] The Bonneville Salt Flats (BSF) have been under threat for decades.  In the 1960s, the land-speed racing community alerted the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency charged with overseeing the BSF, that there was a serious problem.  No protective action was taken until 1997 with the start of a salt brine pumping program proposed by the racers.  There was no need to wait so long.  A study published in 1979 detailed measures that could be undertaken to protect the BSF such as removing the salt brine-collection ditches.  In 1989, the BLM itself warned that the BSF was endangered.  Other studies echoed those sentiments.  Despite a significant salt-brine pumping program, it has become obvious that the amounts being pumped are insufficient to overcome the estimated 50-75 million tons of salt that were removed over the previous six decades. 
 
The cancellation of 2015’s Speed Week due to deteriorating conditions at the BSF has helped build a large coalition effort to address the problem.  With renewed focus, the team has constructed a plan to save the BSF.  Team members from Save the Salt, the Utah Coalition, SCTA-BNI and USFRA are working with state government officials from Utah and Nevada, along with members of Congress and the BLM, engineers and geologists to draft a comprehensive Reclamation Plan.  Additional information will be shared in the coming days and weeks so that the racing community can use their collective voices in demanding its implementation.

Stuart Gosswein
Save the Salt Coalition
www.savethesalt.org

[Peter Jack]

The Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials (BMST) 2015 were CANCELLED due to conditions on the salt flats. However, several other events are still scheduled for September and October if conditions improve. For more information:
http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/?u=cf2344ee733393889dc8b3d39&id=a8ca7e547c
http://www.savethesalt.org/current-events.html
_______________________________________

I'm also taking this opportunity to repost my August 12, 2015 entry on collective efforts to draft a reclamation plan to begin restoring Bonneville:
 
[Aug. 12, 2015] The Bonneville Salt Flats (BSF) have been under threat for decades.  In the 1960s, the land-speed racing community alerted the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency charged with overseeing the BSF, that there was a serious problem.  No protective action was taken until 1997 with the start of a salt brine pumping program proposed by the racers.  There was no need to wait so long.  A study published in 1979 detailed measures that could be undertaken to protect the BSF such as removing the salt brine-collection ditches.  In 1989, the BLM itself warned that the BSF was endangered.  Other studies echoed those sentiments.  Despite a significant salt-brine pumping program, it has become obvious that the amounts being pumped are insufficient to overcome the estimated 50-75 million tons of salt that were removed over the previous six decades. 
 
The cancellation of 2015’s Speed Week due to deteriorating conditions at the BSF has helped build a large coalition effort to address the problem.  With renewed focus, the team has constructed a plan to save the BSF.  Team members from Save the Salt, the Utah Coalition, SCTA-BNI and USFRA are working with state government officials from Utah and Nevada, along with members of Congress and the BLM, engineers and geologists to draft a comprehensive Reclamation Plan.  Additional information will be shared in the coming days and weeks so that the racing community can use their collective voices in demanding its implementation.

Stuart Gosswein
Save the Salt Coalition
www.savethesalt.org

Thanks Stuart. That's the first really positive and constructive news we've had. We appreciate the hard work that's going into this and look forward to hearing ways that the rest of us can contribute.

Pete

[BHR301]

With BMST being cancelled more people make take note of the problem.

Bill

[JoshH]

Just ran into this on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Z6Fhg2B_o

Not sure if this has been posted previously...

[Stan Back]

Can someone enhance the audio?

At my highest setting I can'r hear it.

[JoshH]

Stan - check to see if the youtube window is muted. I've had this happening off and on lately...

[hotrod]

I'm surprised we have so few votes!. There must be more than 750 members here who care?.

Not signing does not mean folks do not care, it means they are not comfortable with the petition wording and stated objective.
The intent of the petition is to get the salt flats restored.
Stopping all mining by Intrepid will not accomplish that goal.
A lot of people care but are not willing to sign a feel good petition which might do more damage than good.

They are a legal business operating in conformance with their lease agreement (to the best of my knowledge), and they also are a major contributor to the local economy of Wendover. If you stop the mining out right you would trigger years of legal action and everything would be on permanent pause.
If you stop all mining by Intrepid, just who do you propose moves all that salt back across the highway? The Feds under contract?

If they are shut down and don't do it, then it will be done by some federal contractor which we will have even less control over (if they ever do any actual work).
That is assuming you can get them to do the job on the taxpayers dime at 3x-5x the actual value of the work if you are lucky.
You know a federal restoration contract would probably be a cost plus contract to an uninvolved outside contracting company and it would be a never ending ticket to tax payer funds (much of it to lawyers). The longer they take to restore the flats the more money they would make.

The problem is, that BLM has granted weak and poorly planned lease agreement rights which conflict with their obligation to protect and restore the salt flats.
They then have failed to act effectively to fix those issues, and have engaged in a lot of hand waving but not much actual action.

The only people with a vested interest in getting that job done quickly and efficiently would be intrepid so they could continue mining operations in a manner that did not damage the salt flats. (some of their brine comes from deep wells not the surface brine pool).
The historic failure to return waste products to where it was taken from is the problem, not the mining it self, if you re-worded the petition to restore the salt flats by returning waste salt from the mining operation, at an adequate rate to recover salt rather than just stall depletion, I would sign it.