Replies

The ponds concentrate the salt as well as every pollutant in the bay. Probably why they closed them down.

I used to wonder about pollutants in that salt, because the bay was polluted. However, they closed them down because environmentalists wanted to restore bay marshlands. Government agencies worked out a land swap with the owners, so that the salt ponds could be shut down and marshland substituted. Real estate is getting so expensive that the owners were going to begin replacing the salt ponds with commercial development (the ponds are all bayfill, half the original bay has been filled to become land). One of the few times that government and environmental groups actually did some good. The result is a cleaner and larger bay.