It is as foreign, and as beautiful, an environment as you will encounter anywhere on Earth. This ancient lake bed in Utah has seen the fastest vehicles that man can build since 1914. The Bonneville Salt Flats undergo a unique environmental cycle every year which makes the area uniquely suitable for land speed racing.

The Salt Flats are federal land that falls under the purview of the Bureau for Land Management (BLM) and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Under its protected status, the importance of racing as a compatible activity is recognized. The annual Speed Week event was established in 1949 and has run most years since then.

The area’s suitability for this kind of racing comes from the yearly cycle of flooding and drying out. Typically from November to May, the area is flooded by a shallow layer of saltwater, which evaporates slowly as the warmer months arrive. Prevailing winds act to smooth the new surface that is formed from the salt left behind during evaporation.

Since 1939, a potash recovery operation has been operating on land leased by the BLM. The process works by collecting saltwater from the area and pumping it into evaporation pools to collect the minerals. Over the years, there has been a very direct impact on the Salt Flats area, which once covered 96,000 acres. The salt – sodium chloride in chemical terms – is of no interest to the mining company and as a result of operations over the decades, the Salt Flats now cover an area estimated to be only 30,000 acres.

Between 1963 and 1982, an estimated 11 million tons of salt was withdrawn from the salt flats, and by the mid-1990s, the historic raceway had lost over 18 inches of salt crust. According to studies commissioned by the BLM, the damage is sufficient to have become “a disruption of the hydrologic cycle which replenishes the salt crust.”

A demonstration project began in 1997 to restore salt to the flats. During this study, brine water was pumped back onto the salt flats by the mining contractor at the rate of 1.5 million tons of salt each year for 5 years. During the program, the salt flats increased in thickness and hardness and demonstrated that the salt in brine removed for mineral extraction can be replenished.

The project came to an end in 2002. Some replenishment efforts continue, but there is growing concern that they are insufficient. Recently, a group of interested organizations have formed the “Save the Salt Coalition” to establish a permanent program for effective mineral management in the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Founding members of the Coalition include the Bonneville Nationals (BNI), Save the Salt Foundation, Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA), SEMA Action Network (SAN), Source Interlink Media and the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association (USFRA).

The Coalition will work with state, federal, industry and other parties to protect the Salt Flats and permit mining to continue. Based on the success of the demonstration project, the Coalition’s goal is to seek a binding agreement on the amount, quality and duration of a successful and permanent replenishment project.

For additional information, you can visit the coalition’s website at www.savethesalt.org