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Low Levels Expose Mysterious Objects In Salt Lake
nilbog writes "KSL TV Reports that record setting low levels in the Great Salt Lake have revealed some mysterious objects (not to mention nearly 1,000 square miles of new 4 wheel drive terrain). One item is even described as a bomb, and many items are still unidentified. A lot of the waste is thought to be from a nearby airforce base and might even be dangerous. Hey, might be a good place to acquire materials for your next backyard project!"
They had a kickass Salt Lake back in the 80s when it threatened to take over the entire basin and attacked I-80, then there were the 60s when it almost went away
0 1s pring/lake.htm
Live in a Salt Lake, you take the expansions and contractions in stride.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/NewsEvents/EPS/v17n2_20
But seriously... I'd worry more about the tons of salt spread on the roads during the winters. The rare redneck who thinks its fun to ruin the mud flats with his Jeep or F350 doesn't really need to worry much about the salt from the lake as compared to the typical salt/sand slurry that UDOT spreads after a heavy snow.
Method of processing duck feet
Wild guess. I haven't seen a picture and I'm not from the Salt Lake Area but if "the Bomb" is not an actual Bomb it could be an external fuel tank for a jet fighter. They are made to detach. They are shaped like WWII Bombs.
I would hope that if it were a real bomb the Air Force would have taken steps to recover and disarm it.
Morton Thiokol (of the infamous shuttle SRB's) did a lot of vertical rocket test firing in remote areas right by shores of Salt Lake. I guess it is hard to keep a good rocket down.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Ummm... That's Slashcode's long-link prevention, which helps to make sure that the page doesn't get stretched by people who would otherwise make the site unreadable.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Trying to decide just who owns a piece of real estate on the shore of the Great Salt Lake can be a really interesting problem. Other lakes in Utah also seem to have this problem, but it only really comes up when the lakes get too high or too low.
In the case of Salt Lake, because it is so shallow a drop of only a few feet can explose hundreds of acres of land. Admittedly it is rather smelly mud, and unless you are walking around in hip boots you would probabally not really want to get out into it except in a few spots. Still, some people have ranches that are on the lake shore and sometimes let their cattle wander out a little farther.
It is also debateable about wheither people using recreational vehicles can use the land. During times of high water levels you really can't drive around the Great Salt Lake, except on public highways that don't exactly follow the shoreline. When the water gets low however, there are no fences (usually) to get in the way of taking a 4-wheel ORV out into the mud. Also, by state law any land found below the statutory lake level is public property, which is what most people use as the excuse for why they can travel on the land. Of course, this even gets even more bizzare when older land claims, including stuff settled from the Homestead Act get into play that prempt the state law, so it isn't always so clear.
Hill Air Force Base does routine training over the Great Salt Lake as well, including flights into the Wendover Test Range. The western shore of the Great Salt Lake is pretty much uninhabited, and some of the bomb testing range does extend onto the shore. It is not unheard of for F-16's to go crashing into the lake, although the Air Force does try to recover all of the pieces when it does happen. The Test Range does have quite a bit of unexploded munitions that make it very hazardous to wander around the area without a guide. The area is about the size of a typical mid-western county.