Potash is potassium-based salt primarily used throughout the world as a fertilizer for crops such as corn, soy, rice and wheat. Scientists largely agree that years of aquifer overdraws by nearby potash mining have driven the problem, yet insist that there's no hard evidence that simply paying the mining company to return water to the area will solve it amid detrimental human activity like extracting minerals or driving racecars. The glistening white salt of the world famous area is shrinking near the Utah-Nevada line. State biologists collects water samples in the Bonneville Salt Flats Tuesday, Sept. Racers struggle to find a track long enough to reach record speeds with only 8 miles of track compared 13 miles (20 kilometers) several decades ago. The crust keeps tires cool at high speeds and provides an ideal surface for racing-unless seasonal flooding fails to recede or leaves behind an unstable layer of salt.

The overall footprint has shrunk to about half of its peak size in 1994. It's thinned by roughly one-third in the last 60 years. As nearby groundwater replaces the mineral-rich brine, evaporation yields less salt than historic cycles of flooding and evaporation left on the landscape. Research has time and again shown that the briny water in the aquifer below the flats is depleting faster than nature can replenish it. The glistening white terrain of the Bonneville Salt Flats, a remnant of a prehistoric lakebed that is one of the American West's many other-worldly landscapes, serves as a racetrack for land speed world records and backdrop for movies like 'Independence Day' and 'The World's Fastest Indian.'īut it's growing thinner and thinner as those who cherish it clamor for changes to save it.

Salt flat racer