
Salt Ponds of the San Francisco Bay - archgoon
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/salt-ponds-san-francisco
======
Cmccann7
I've taken a few pictures of these salt ponds before. They change colors quite
frequently and form really cool and unique patters. Best view of them is up in
the air in a helicopter or plane.

[https://chrismccann.com/outside-facebook-hq](https://chrismccann.com/outside-
facebook-hq) \- These are the salt ponds being reclaimed outside of the
Facebook office.

[https://chrismccann.com/palette](https://chrismccann.com/palette) \- Here are
the ones in Fremont, still being used for salt production.

~~~
brudgers
I really enjoyed your portfolio.

~~~
Cmccann7
Thanks! Appreciate the kind words :)

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travisl12
Back in the day I was an acoustic engineer and as part of an EIR (environment
impact report) that is needed for the development of one of the salt marshes
we had to go out on the salt pond levy's and setup sound level meters.

Two take aways from spending time out on the salt ponds.

1) They smell really really bad.

2) The soil is still very wet even in areas that look like solid ground. I
nearly lost a shoe when my foot sank into this deep muck.

Moral of the story: better to view these ponds from afar.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> They smell really really bad.

I feel that's understating it. When I first moved to the bay area we drove by
these multiple times. I assumed it HAD to be some sort of sewage treatment
facility (after all where I used to live in Maryland had one near by and it
smelled very similar).

They're really cool and interesting but yes I recommend viewing from afar or
keeping the inside AC on when driving near it.

~~~
rconti
I've worked within spitting distance of these types of areas for 10 years now.
I liked to joke that when I took the first job, they only hired during the
winter, because if people knew what it smelled like in the summer, they'd
never take the job.

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rmason
My father worked for Morton Salt in sales. I wrote term papers in school on
the industry and thought I knew a lot about it but never knew about this at
all.

FYI salt is mined under both Detroit and it's Canadian sister city of Windsor
where Morton has their mine. My dad took many customers down in the mine. I
always wanted to go but you had to be over sixteen.

Luck would have it shortly before my sixteenth birthday the companies insurer
made them stop giving tours ;<).

[http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/detroit-salt-
mine](http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/detroit-salt-mine)

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finnh
Stanford Crew rows out of a facility right next to[0] some of these salt
ponds. When I rowed there - 20 years ago - there were also huge piles of salt
right next door; I think it was/is a staging area for Cargill. These piles
were big enough to have bulldozers driving around on them.

I think the facility may have moved a short distance since then; at the time
there was also a truly enormous cylindrical "ship" docked right next door at a
Lockheed Martin facility (since disappeared, it looks like). It looked like it
could telescope to change its length; I don't know why.

They _also_ used to whisper in crew recruits' ears that we would shortly be
moving to row on Crystal Springs Reservoir[1], which would be a very different
experience. That ... never happened =)

[0]
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Stanford+Rowing+and+Sailin...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Stanford+Rowing+and+Sailing+Center/@37.5078811,-122.2193088,4451m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x808fa2f7376d8e87:0x29660fa759d54139!8m2!3d37.5047587!4d-122.2179732)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crystal+Springs+Reservoir/...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crystal+Springs+Reservoir/@37.5183377,-122.3612889,12090m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x808f7584f0a50c09:0xea1d14e19011e005!8m2!3d37.528!4d-122.365)

~~~
jt2190
Your comment about the telescoping cylindrical ship intrigued me. I think it
might have been the Hughes Mining Barge: [http://aviationintel.com/update-
hughes-mining-barge-hmb-1-su...](http://aviationintel.com/update-hughes-
mining-barge-hmb-1-survives-restored-glory/)

The barge is now in Alameda:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bay+Ship+%26+Yacht+Co.,+29...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bay+Ship+%26+Yacht+Co.,+2900+Main+St,+Alameda,+CA+94501/@37.7897268,-122.291524,17z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x808f80eb83b73867:0xb86d15c77148f8c0?hl=en)

~~~
finnh
That's it!

We had been told it was used to nab the Soviet sub, but when I tried to verify
that story when writing the above post I only saw pics of the Glomar Explorer,
and figured we had been told a tall tale.

Glad to see some deeper research proved out the original story - thanks!

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gmisra
Many years ago I worked on the computer models used when developing the
restoration plan. Happy to answers any questions.

~~~
542458
Cool! What was the motivation for the restoration project? Like, were the salt
ponds causing some sort of environmental damage, or was the smell hurting
property values, or something else?

~~~
thenewwazoo
There's a big push to restore the wetlands to something approaching their pre-
industrial state, which were salt marshes housing many species and benefiting
the ecology of the area.

~~~
azinman2
But did they not make money any more? Why did cargill care?

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mickrussom
As a middle class person without a property and kids just knowing we maintain
salt ponds in an area where housing is in a world-record man-made critical
shortage in a state where if fly over at night is mostly empty is beyond me.
No houseboats (not many), no more foster city style land creation. Not much
building up. Massive swaths of land that isnt a park, nor a preserve, nor
"usable", but remains undeveloped. Poor public transit. I visit Japan quite
often and wonder if San Fran had gotten firestormed into oblivion in 1945 we
would be further along? Makes no sense to me to see Tokyo, starting from near
nothing in 1945, holding 5 times as many people, having 525 subway stations,
having so much more housing built up and infrastructure and a huge middle
class (of course with demographics issues, but still) and to be here and watch
basically the worst played game of Sim-City played out in real life.
Billionaires club over here. I dont get why they like to live near muddy
stinking salt mush while their baristas, kids teachers and man-servants need
to rent tents in Gilroy to make it paycheck to paycheck.

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meej
The Hidden Ecologies blog collects kite aerial photography of the salt ponds.
[http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/hiddenecologies/](http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/hiddenecologies/)

More info about the project:
[http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/hiddenecologies/?page_id=41](http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/hiddenecologies/?page_id=41)

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jackfoxy
Very interesting to me because I grew up with these ponds and drive by some of
them every workday. Sure would like more specifics: which ponds are being
restored, which staying in production? Are some levies being removed, staying
in place, being reconfigured? What's the schedule, year by year?

~~~
Animats
The west bay ones have mostly shut down. You can look at some drained ones by
driving out Seaport Blvd, which is the bay end of Woodside Road. There are
still some narrow gauge tracks and hopper cars lying around. The east bay ones
south of the Dumbarton Bridge are still operating.

The process is simple. Seawater is let into a pond, and about half of it is
allowed to evaporate. This doubles the salt concentration. That brine is moved
to the next pond, which is half as big, and about half of the water is allowed
to evaporate, which doubles the concentration again. The final pond is much
smaller than the original, and there all the water in the now highly
concentrated brine is allowed to evaporate, after which the salt is scraped
up. The process takes huge land area and about five years, but little labor.

Different bacteria live at the different brine concentrations. That's why the
colors vary.[1]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=14276449&goto=item%3Fi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=14276449&goto=item%3Fid%3D14271144%2314276449)

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frik
Isn't the Facebook HQ (former Sun Microsystems campus) located right next to
the salt ponds?

~~~
Cmccann7
Yes they are

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welder
> While the salt ponds and their beautiful showing may not be there forever,
> the project is on a 30-year plan, so there’s still some time to enjoy this
> fading ghost of San Francisco’s industrial history.

Does this mean the smell will go away in 30 years from now?

~~~
nullc
Wetlands don't smell great either.

~~~
bdamm
Yeah, I figure the smell is the exposed contaminants of the Bay itself.
Everywhere on the Bay where you have mud banks they smell terrible at low
tide.

~~~
nightfly
Mud doesn't have to be contaminated to smell bad, it just kinda does
naturally.

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fenollp
Here is what it could look like when/if they do restore this area as marais
salant: [https://goo.gl/maps/d5ATzvYyxs22](https://goo.gl/maps/d5ATzvYyxs22)

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ZanyProgrammer
You'll get a good glimpse taking the Capitol Corridor east from San Jose.

~~~
trelliscoded
Or the ACE.

You'll also see what's left of the drawbridge ghost town if you're quick:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawbridge,_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawbridge,_California)

~~~
rconti
Alviso is a very unique area as well:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alviso,_San_Jose,_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alviso,_San_Jose,_California)

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marmshallow
> their ever-changing pigments always stand out from the sky, and have served
> as a visual marker for astronauts

Can someone verify it is possible to spot these ponds from a usual orbit?

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1024core
"Salt Ponds of San Francisco _Bay_ "

~~~
archgoon
Thanks! I miscopied that. :)

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maverick_iceman
I always wondered about those bright colored regular shapes when I landed at
SFO. Glad I finally know what they are.

