The Salt Mine Beneath Cayuga Lake
Near Ithaca, New York
Look out at the calm surface of Cayuga Lake and picture, deep underground and running for miles beneath the water, a working salt mine. On the east shore near Lansing, the Cayuga salt mine descends deep below the surface, and its tunnels reach out under the bed of the lake itself. The salt down there is astonishingly old.
It was left behind by an ancient sea that dried up more than four hundred million years ago, sealed away in a rock layer geologists call the Salina Group. Today the mine produces rock salt, most of it spread on winter roads across the Northeast to melt ice and snow. That closeness to the lake has made the mine controversial.
Figures on its exact depth vary, and rankings among North American salt mines are hard to pin down. What is not in dispute is the concern. Local environmental advocates have long worried about the risk of the lake and the mine meeting, and pushed for its closure, while the operators have monitored the ground for any sign of the surface settling.
Beauty on top, and a vast dark labyrinth of ancient sea below.
