About five times a year we fly a small private plane
from Arizona to California and back, and our route often takes us
just to the north of the Salton Sea (HCN,
3/03/08). We’ve often wondered what it’s like on the
ground. Now we know, and we don’t need to land to see it for
ourselves. It sounds as if it’s an environmental problem with
potential for greater future harm to both people and wildlife.
Is there not some way to harvest the salt, but save the
water and put it back into the lake? We’ve seen the big man-made
salt beds on the west coast of Baja, for example, where front
loaders shovel the salt into trucks and barges for shipment. Salt
is apparently a needed commodity. Could they not build similar salt
beds next to the Salton Sea? And salvage some of the water by
funneling it back to the lake? Or what about building a roof over
the salt beds to condense the water and funnel it back to the lake
while also harvesting the salt?
Janet L. Gore
Phoenix, Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Getting the salt out.
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