Actually, this isn’t the worst idea. You could get the same result just dumping rock or concrete into the deepest parts of the lake to displace water higher everywhere else. It would take an incredible amount of fill and permanently damage the lake’s ability to retain water should the level ever rise again, but it would immediately resolve the problem of water level getting too low for now.
I couldn’t begin to estimate how much work it would be to actually do this. It could be as complicated as trucking in millions of tons of rubble from a remote site or it could be as simple as dynamiting a conveniently placed mountain and letting the resulting landslide fall into the lake.
On the few occasions where Pulaski County de-ices roads, I’ve seen sand. I presume that is chemically neutral and has no pesticides. It probably comes from dredging the Arkansas river.
I remember that Houghton Michigan used sand because the temperatures were too cold for salt to do much good. They had to do regular maintenance on the storm drains that were clogged with sand.
After visiting a friend at Michigan Tech over spring break, it took several washings to get all of the sand out of my car’s undercarriage.
The flats include a variety of micro environments. In some spots the soil is so salty it prevents vegetation growth. These spots seem to be totally desolate. In other places you will find numerous kinds of plants and animals. Ponds and marshy areas can be found in spots near the edges of the flats and they provide critical habitat for plants and animals.
The environment is fragile and needs to be treated with respect.
Yet more comment off the OP:
I’ve spoken with hobbists who drain marine water onto their lawn and claim that the grass grows well.
I don’t know if aquarium salt comes from sea water, or if it is made from chemicals.
Could we not fill ocean going shipping vessels with salt, then sail them around the seas performing the equivalent of the euphamistic “crop dusting”?
A ship that size full of salt, that would be the result of lots of desalinated water, eh?
People were saying that the salt is contaminated. If the salt is contaminated with salt, then you’d have a point here, but that doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?
I don’t know to what extent salt from any given source is contaminated; or whether the usual desalinization processes cause contamination. I was just pointing out that if something’s too contaminated to be sold, dumping it in the open environment isn’t a good thing to do with it.
Excess salt is of course a problem in itself in most places; including many places that already have a problem with too much salt.
I was thinking along the same lines, however, there is still the resulting cost of running a ship to disperse salt at sea. I think any time you have to move the waste salt somewhere else, there will be an additional cost to desalinating the water, which is already kinda-sorta expensive to start with.
Anyway, as I was pointing out much earlier, desal is expensive, and for more reasons than just the energy input. Maybe we figure out what to do with the salt, maybe we just kick it down the road for future generations to worry about.
Desalinating water for home use, drinking, washing, and maybe for some light industrial uses makes sense.
Desalinating for agricultural purposes is going to be problematic, at best.
I don’t know where pretzel factories are concentrated. Maybe Milwaukee? Time they moved to Nevada.
Vegas uses lots of water but I had read the system was well managed and the town had sensible restrictions. Guess those only go so far and can do so much. A lot of demand for only so much supply. But America is an innovative place. Maybe some smart folks will figure out something.
Sorry, I was mistaken about the salt flats content, apparently it is 90% common NaCl. Not the kind of place to start contaminating. Someplace like open pit borax mines in CA would be a good place for it though. Desalination removes water and leaves everything else behind. There must be tons of nitrates from fertilizers mixed in with who knows what else.