The Salt of the Earth

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

When the soil becomes laden with salt, only a few sparse weeds will grow in it. That’s becoming a serious problem.

“And all that day Abimelech fought against the city until he had captured it and killed its people. Then he demolished the city and sowed it with salt.” From the Bible, Judges, chapter 9 verse 45. There are other examples of ancient armies sowing the fields of their defeated enemies with salt, making them incapable of producing crops, thus assuring their enemies’ utter destitution. Some 4,000 years ago the fields of southern Mesopotamia, having been over-irrigated for many decades (in a hot region where evaporation was rapid) became so laden with salt that they could not grow crops, and soon Mesopotamia was no more. 

Now, that very thing is being done to us, and not by an occupying army. Like the Mesopotamians, we are doing it to ourselves.

We use salt, like most other industrial products, lavishly. We dump it on our roads, parking lots and steps  to melt ice in winter, and in the spring it washes into nearby streams and rivers. We wash our clothes and dishes with detergents that contain sodium, one of the two problematic elements in salt. We eat salty food and drink salty drinks, with the result that our sewage is salty, something that the treatment plants cannot deal with. Salty water leaches minerals from pipes and the soil to add their toxicity to the water that receives them. Many industrial processes such as washing computer chips, for example, require the use — and disposal — of large quantities of salt.

The resulting salinization of cityscapes, countrysides and waterways is a real and growing threat to aquatic life, wildlife and any living thing that requires fresh water to drink. It has been known and studied for decades, but very little has been done to mitigate it.

Officials in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area are increasingly worried about the rising salinization of everything, according to The Washington Post. The EPA says that people with high blood pressure should not drink water containing more than 20 milligrams of sodium per liter. At 60 milligrams per liter, the water’s taste will be affected. Water from the freshwater sources that supply the Washington Metro area frequently tests above these levels, which the EPA does not enforce.    What is fueling real concern now is that these levels have been rising steadily for decades, observed by scientists, ignored by civic leaders.

Just about the only solution to the problem would be to install desalination equipment in every sewage treatment plant, at staggering cost and complexity. No one is even considering it. There have been some feeble attempts to reduce or change the use of road salt, but that’s about it.

This new load of toxicity is being added to streams and rivers and lakes already staggering under the enormous burden of excess nitrogen washing off of industrial farm fields, overstimulating algae to the detriment of all other aquatic life and creating huge dead zones in the ocean at the mouths of all of our rivers — the one at the mouth of the Mississippi is the size of Rhode Island. No remedy is in sight for that problem either.

Like the Mesopotamians, we are being told what is happening and warned of its consequences. But when they had to choose between short-term convenience and long-term survival, they chose plenty of food today, oblivion for their empire tomorrow. 

Sounds familiar.