List members and concerned racers,
The following is my opinion.
The heading "Salt Flats are Dry" should send chills up the spine of everyone
who cares about the Bonneville Salt Flats. Thanks to Cris and Ed Shearer we
have an accurate, off-season, on-the-spot report to those who only go to the
salt in the summer.
This is an occasion where everyone who cares about the future of the
Bonneville Salt Flats needs to start pushing for Reilly Industries to get
the brine pumping going again.
Larry Volk who is Save the Salt Chairman and Mary West, the Secretary,
should be on top of this. The money that has been paid to the Save the Salt
Fund is supposed to be going to a watchdog effort. At Speed Week there was
a lot of talk about supporting that cause with additional money. Larry's
phone number is (801) 292-5425.
The combined USFRA, SCTA/BNI leadership/membership needs to put up a howl to
the BLM asking why there has been no pumping for over six weeks. This
pumping is part of an agreement between three parties, racers/Save the Salt
who use the race course area, the BLM who has Federal control of the area
and Reilly who actually owns part of the area (including the south end of
the race course) and has leases for mining on virtually the whole basin.
The target amount is 1,500,000 tons of salt returned to the racing surface
each winter. The last two years the amount returned has been over a
million, eight hundred thousand tons. That's well over the target amount
but obviously a do-able amount to pump and the facilities are in place for
it to continue. There are seventy three million tons on the south side of
I-80 that belong on the north side. The Reilly mining leases are due for
renewal in the next two years. The BLM Salt Lake office number is (801)
977-4300.
If this down time were costing Reilly anything you can be sure they would
have solved the problems involved many weeks ago. The fact that they pumped
a very high brine content last April could have damaged the pumps and
probably did, but they had all summer to repair any problems there. Their
main offices are in Indianapolis, IN.
The former, as of this month, BLM Director, Tom Fry, was on the salt at
World of Speed in September and voiced the opinion, at that time, that the
pumping project should continue until there was a good thirteen mile course
again. He was a Democrat appointee ... campaign type promises?
If this is an example of how well Reilly performs when the pressure is off,
look out for the future of the pumping/restoration project at the end of the
first five years. You have all seen how much two really good pumping years
helped the salt after a less than sterling first year, BUT WE ARE LOOKING AT
NET GAIN, and all that and more could all be lost in another two bad years.
I was on the salt the first time for Speed Week in 1951 and I remember how
much salt there was out there and how hard, thick, endless and deep it
seemed ... and how safe the racers felt running there. I'd like to see it
that way again in my lifetime. How can we assure it?
Wes Potter
on 12/26/00 10:25 AM, Cris Shearer at cshearer@tacisp.com wrote:
> Ed and I drove to the salt flats Sat via: Lakepoint, across the UP
> railroad and over to Lucin.
> When we got to the end of the access road, the flats were dry. There
> were cars doing burn-outs and laying rubber. We called Gary Allen from
> the end of the access road and let him know. He said the pumps were
> still down and were suppose to begin pumping again this week. We then
> drove over to the pumps and could see one pump was running. Gary said
> he and Larry talked about what Reilly would do to make up for the 1 -1/2
> months of down time. We also heard one or two of Reilly's big boys
> retired. Don't know what/if any impact this might cause. Just wanted
> to give you a quick update. I'm home all week if anything comes up.
> Hope you all had a great Christmas. Cris
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