The Bonneville Salt Flats are famous world-wide for their beauty and the car racing that takes place on them. People travel from far and wide to stand on a pure white landscape that spans as far as the eye can see.
The remnants of an ancient lake, the salt flats are truly a natural wonder unlike anything else. Expect to be amazed if you make the trip to visit. Whether you come to witness a race or to have some unique solitude, you won’t be disappointed.
But the Bonneville Salt Flats are in trouble. Due to extensive mining, the salt is disappearing- getting thinner and lowering in acreage.
Thankfully, relief efforts are well on their way to restore and protect the flats!
What are salt flats?
Salt flats are- obviously- flat pieces of land that are covered in salt and minerals. You can find them in deserts.
Salt flats are huge tourist destinations and people flock from all around the world to witness them. The Bonneville Salt Flats are about an hour and a half away from Salt Lake City and bring many visitors to the area each year.
In addition to being drop dead gorgeous, the salt flats are also famous for car racing. Lots of speed records have been set in Bonneville, including reaching 630 mph in 1970, a speed that wasn’t beat until 1983!
While the Bonneville Salt Flats are open all year round, most events are held in the summer and fall. If you’re not looking to go for an event, any time of year is great.
(Related: What Is There To Do At The Bonneville Salt Flats?)
How was it formed?
The Bonneville Salt Flats formed when ancient Lake Bonneville dried up. The lake was very big and filled most of the Great Basin. When it shrank beneath its outlet, the water got salty.
When the water kept evaporating, salt was left behind.
The flats have many micro environments. In some places the soil is too salty for vegetation to grow, while many plants and animals thrive in other spots. By the edges, you’ll find marsh and ponds that are vital habitats.
How big are the salt flats in Utah?
The Bonneville Salt Flats are 12-by-5 miles long and occupy 30,000 acres of Utah’s west desert. They are about 46 square miles.
How deep are the salt flats in Utah?
The salt crust ranges from a few inches to nearly two meters thick.
Why are the Salt Flats disappearing?
The salt flats were once 96,000 acres in size, but are now closer to 30,000 acres. At least ⅓ of that loss is due to mineral extraction- namely, potash mining.
The extraction of potash, which are salts rich in potassium that get utilized in fertilizer, started in 1917. This was because World War I stopped the importation of salts that came from Germany before then.
Production really ramped up in the 1960s when the Bureau of Land Management leased 25,000 acres to a mining company (private, might I add). By the 80s, it was clear that the flats were starting to shrink. The crust was becoming thin.
In 1960, the salt was many feet deep. In May of 2021, it was ¼ of an inch thick.
Severe crashes have taken place because of the poor quality of the salt.
The Bonneville basin is the region’s largest source of dust, impacting air quality and speeding up snowmelt in the spring in the Wasatch Mountains- the primary water source for almost 2 million people.
Without the crust of salt containing the dirt underneath, more dust is to be blown into the wind.
Potash mining is extracting salt at a faster rate than it accumulates. Intrepid Potash extracts over 5 billion gallons of brine each year. Sales from all the extraction companies bring $1 billion to Utah’s economy.
But it’s not a sustainable economic source. As the brine gets removed, the surrounding groundwater rushes in, decreasing the salinity of it. This means new salt is unable to form.
How are they attempting to restore the salt flats?
In 2019, the land-speed racing community was asking for Utah to contribute $5 million towards a $50 million fund to restore the flats.
They wanted the state to contribute the money to get the attention of the federal government, in the hopes that they would provide the other $45 million.
The $50 million would go towards new pumps, pipelines, ditches, and ponds, to move the brine from the south side of Interstate 80- where Intrepid has their waste byproduct retained- to the north side of the interstate, where the salt came from.
It would be a better way to extract the water and potash- essentially, water management.
In 2016, the state passed a resolution that called on the BLM to plan how to restore the flats.
The decade-long project would expand on a trial brine-pumping program that started in the late 1990s to return about 1 million tons of salt over the next 5 years. Intrepid voluntarily continued the project, slowly increasing the amount of salt returned to the flats. They’ve returned a total of about 10 million tons.
But the BLM decided that the effort wasn’t enough, because the underground aquifers absorb roughly 90% of the brine that’s put back onto the flats. Therefore, it’s not enough to change the salt thickness or expand the flats.
Thankfully, in March of 2019, the Utah legislature approved the funds, contingent on the addition of federal funds! They also allowed the Utah Department of Natural Resources to start a program to restore the flats.
The battle to preserve the flats had another victory in 2021. SEMA, BLM (US Bureau of Land Management), DNR (Utah Department of Natural Resources), UGS (Utah Geological Survey), and Intrepid Potash Inc. have all had more progress in restoring the salt.
A new well was installed in 2021, in addition to equipment to collect data about evaporation. This equipment will inform the Restore Bonneville program as to how to proceed.
The new measuring equipment and well are only a few of the first actions taken by Restore Bonneville, a project between DNR and BLM that will be operated by Intrepid to regrow and restore the salt flats.
When they understand the environment better thanks to these tools, they’ll be able to learn how to manage the pumping of brine and increase the volume that gets returned to the flats.
The main funding is coming from state and federal appropriations.
Conclusion
The Bonneville Salt Flats need help. They’re rapidly disappearing and only a joint effort between state, government, and private companies can save them.
Visiting the salt flats is an act of preservation in itself. The more people who visit and see the flats, the more the public will care. In turn, that puts more pressure on those in charge to act.
On top of being a natural wonder, the salt flats need all the help they can get. There may not be a more worthwhile trip on the planet.
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