Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Hot off the SCTA website:



*****Speed Week 2015 Has Been Cancelled*****
The SCTA President/Race Director Bill Lattin & the
BNI Chairman spent this morning
(July 20th) on the salt. The most they could find w
as 2 1/4 miles of salt suitable for a safe
race course. The rest of the salt flats are either
wet or wet and muddy. If the wet salt gets
dry, future events could be possible.

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Wow! Damn, I hope the folks who reserved at the hotels will be able to get refunds. Their policies on that suck.

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

2 years in a row, that is real bummer. Better to know ahead than to have towed out last year, and get a few inches of rain on the course.

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Much more to it than wet. Potash company has been raping it for years. Not much left. A huge shame that the public knows very little about. It's like contracting a lumber company to cut down all the redwood trees.

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Here are some links I dug up on the Bonneville Salt Flats, no pun intented!
http://bangshift.com/bangshift1320/i...une-thinks-so/

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55...-mesa.html.csp

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Stangblue, thanks for your post.
The greed here is unimaginable.

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Yeh, lay off those workers

Tim

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

GREED!!! is correct Butch and that is all it is. This could be a end of an era.

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Kind of sad issue here. In the nine years of going to Bonneville and being on a team, I started seeing the salt decline in the last 2 or 3 years of going. That would have been 2010-12. A true legacy and I would hate to see it end. Here is part of the problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGtr...ature=youtu.be

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Could always go to Blackrock. Not to many motels near by.

Tim

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Some of us must be reading a different article!

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

Was there for 2012 Speedweek and just stopped by for a photo op in 2013 on the way home from an EFV-8C/A meet in Lake Tahoe. Was hoping to get back again for another Speedweek before I get too old :). Maybe 2016 will be a good year for the Salt.

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

If you think the last few years have been bad, you should be able to see how it has declined since the early 50's.
Back then it was easy to lay out a 10 mile circle for endurance running. Now they are lucky to get 7 miles of usable track in a straight line.
Back then the whole salt bed was so hard, you could drive a 20 penny nail in half way, bend it over and not break the edge of the salt. Now, you can drive the nail clear down with one easy stroke. No way on bending it over.
The Save the Salt organization has been partially helpful in reducing the decline in surface quality but they can only do so much.

http://www.savethesalt.org/coalition.html

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

The whole thing is a damn shame and the reason this happened has to be blamed on our Washington politicians and the Bureau of Land Management. I have never been to Bonneville but when I crewed on a car we raced at the drag strip in Boise. Riding through vast areas of federal land to get there we saw Halliburton drill rigs and geological engineers all over the place. Not only do operations like this rape the land quite often they get tax breaks to do it.

Re: Bonneville to wet again, bummer
 

I hear what you are saying Pete. When I went in 03 it did not look the best but not near as bad as it does now. The streamliner team I was on went over 400MPH app. 30 some times.
The best was 462. A lot of people think the 400 MPH runs are going to become a thing of the past. I hope not, and there are a few new top contender streamliners wanting to come out and run this year. Perhaps the cook meet will happen. We will see in a few more weeks. The save the salt group has a rough road ahead of them.