alt Hacker NewsOne of the largest salt mines in the world exists under Lake Erie
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There's a salt mine mostly under Cayuga Lake in New York, in Lansing. When we bought our current house we had to sign a paper indicating we knew there was a mine somewhere near (underground about a mile to the north.) The risk of sinkholes or deformation from future collapse is always there, although not specifically for us as we are too far away. Development patterns change as you get to the area where the mine is: fewer (and older) homes, more commercial development.
Reminds me of the Lake Peigneur disaster in 1980 in Louisiana when an oil drilling rig entered a salt mine located under the lake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcWRO2pyLA8
I spent part of my childhood in Winsford, a salt mining town in the UK (its other claim to fame being that it was where Neville Southall played before Everton). Every time I pass a yellow bin of salt for gritting the roads, I get to feel a little bit of nostalgia (before falling over because councils no longer have enough money to grit the roads and pavements).
The last chapter in the lives of a lot of Great Lakes freighters is hauling salt. Apparently it’s no better for ships than it is for cars.
If you get a chance, the steamship Mather is docked near the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland. It was the flagship of the Cleveland Cliffs line, and was spared the fate of hauling salt. You can tour it, and if you book ahead, you can get an extended belowdecks tour that includes machinery spaces that you don’t see on the regular tour.
Windsor Salt, is mined from under lake erie in Windsor, Ontario. You used to be able to do a tour.
The largest salt mine in the world is under Lake Huron: https://www.compassminerals.com/who-we-are/locations/goderic...
My initial reaction was fear.
But then I wondered if modern mining engineering is a solved problem? In that they mostly know how to make safe tunnels?
Then I looked up how deep Erie is and it’s pretty shallow, with an average depth of 62 ft!
Would highly recommend the book "Salt" by Mark Kurlansky. I never realized how influential salt was to the course of human history.
What happens when they run out of salt? All the salt they put on the roads must end up back in the lakes but not in a way that is as easy to extract, right?
It has always amazed me that the US is so unusually rich in a variety of natural resources.