cayuga lake salt mine tour

Deepest salt mine in North America helps keep Upstate NY roads clear (video)

• Updated: Dec. 29, 2015, 1:54 p.m. |
• Published: Dec. 29, 2015, 12:54 p.m.

• Glenn Coin | [email protected]

Lansing, N.Y. -- There's no off-season at the Cayuga Salt Mine, where Central New York gets much of its road salt. About 200 workers mine an average of 10,000 tons of salt a day, year-round.

"We mine as much on July first we do on January first," said Plant Manager Shawn Wilczynski, a South Dakota native who has 19 years in the salt-mining business. "There's no way we can mine enough salt in four months to meet all the demand."

At 2,300 feet, the mine is the deepest in North America. That's deep enough, Wilczynski notes, to nearly stack two Empire State buildings, which has a roof height of 1,250 feet. The mine shaft is at Portland Point, on the eastern shore near the south end of Cayuga Lake, and the mine itself stretches north along the lake to a mile past Taughannock Point, the company's website says.

The mine stretches more than seven miles underground, tapping into a vast salt deposit that stretches from Pennsylvania to Ontario.

The mine was first opened in 1916; Cargill Deicing Technology bought it in 1970 and still runs it today.

The salt extracted from the Cargill mine is sold to highway departments and government agencies. New York state buys about half of the 2 million tons mined annually, Wilczynski said.

The mine has enough salt to keep mining for 20 to 50 years, he said.

"Folks ask me how long they think the mine will be around, and my response is as long as we need road friction for people driving cars we're probably going to need road salt," Wilczynski  said. "We can be around until people start driving hovercrafts."

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Cargill applies for extra groundwater storage space for its salt mine under Cayuga Lake

LANSING, N.Y. — Cargill, Inc. submitted an application to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in June 2023 to modify its mining permit for its salt mine 2,000 feet under Cayuga Lake. The company wants to establish additional water storage areas to store groundwater leaking into the mine.

A representative from the DEC told The Ithaca Voice on Friday that the inflow of water outlined in the permit application is “not related to the lake” and is “not unanticipated.” The water entering the mine “is not a leak” and “is not associated with the lake,” the official said.

The department has been aware of the inflow of water from the shafts of the mine and the storage of it since the early 1990s, he said, as the company is required to report annually on the source and volume of the water inflow, as well as the storage location. 

Groundwater in shafts 1, 2 and 3 have been recorded by engineers and researchers contracted by the company itself since at least 2017, according to Cargill’s 2018 Annual Review obtained by independent journalist Peter Mantius at Waterfront Online . 

The 2023 application outlines plans to establish an additional 150-acre water storage area within an abandoned section of the mine referred to as S3, located at the southernmost portion of the mine closest to Ithaca, and the adjacent areas known as E3-E9. These areas are the deepest parts of the mine. 

The storage of groundwater in abandoned parts of the mine is a “common industry practice,” according to Senior Global Communications Manager at Cargill Chuck Miller on Friday. At Lansing, the “primary sources of groundwater are in regions near shaft 1, which has been in place since 1916, and brine water from our operations.”

The new storage area in S3 is estimated to hold approximately 360 million gallons of water according to the application, and will fill at rates of about 1.3-1.8 million gallons per month, providing the mine “15-18 years of water storage at the current inflow rates.” 

A copy of the company’s 2018 Annual Review shows the mine’s current storage area, which has a capacity of about 14 million gallons per year, was expected to reach capacity in approximately 6.1 years – or by 2023.

The representative from the DEC said the practice of pumping water to an underground settling pond to become fully saturated before being pumped to abandoned areas of the mine is a “common practice” in salt mines throughout the world. 

“Because the water has accumulated over time, the area historically used for storage has filled and Cargill is seeking a new underground location to store water,” the department official said. 

The current rate of water flowing into the mine is not included in Cargill’s application to modify the permit, despite language establishing that “inflow sources and rates are well understood,” and “groundwater inflow is managed by the facility.” The total amount of water that has entered the mine is also not provided. 

The 2018 review included inflow rates from 2017-2018, which were recorded at approximately 36 gpm (gallons per minute). The figure is a total of all inflow rates measured at all points of inflow in shafts 1, 2 and 3.  

The DEC representative did not reveal to The Voice the total amount of water that has entered the mine, nor the current inflow rate.  

Since August of last year, local environmental activists and organizations have made concerted efforts to call on Gov. Kathy Hochul and the DEC to enhance their oversight efforts to protect Cayuga Lake from any potential environmental damages the mine could pose. 

The effort intensified over the summer after reports that the company was interested in selling the mine. The company has yet to confirm or deny the report.

Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now (CLEAN), a nonprofit advocacy group based in Lansing, unified other local organizations over their cause, and released an online petition in September 2023 that has been signed by over 3,000 people as of January 2024. 

The application says a regular inspection of the water storage area in S3 will be conducted by a supervisor or engineer on a monthly basis to monitor ground conditions, check gas levels and record advances of the water shoreline. 

Electronic convergence stations had already been installed in the S3 area by the time the application was submitted to the DEC this summer, to track changes in the rock that occur when salty water is introduced to a previously dry portion of a mine. 

“All water stored in this area will be sufficiently saturated to minimize dissolution of the remaining salt pillars, floor and roof,” according to the application. 

A representative from the DEC told The Voice on Friday that it’s reviewing the application and that the department “subjects every application to a rigorous review of all applicable federal and state standards to ensure the agency’s decisions are protective of public health and the environment.”

It’s accepted by experts that salty water can “destabilize overlying rock layers and lead to their eventual sagging and collapse,” according to a 2013 Geological Survey Report by the U.S. Department of Interior on the 1994 collapse of the Retsof Salt Mine, which damaged the environment and soiled drinking water for years after. 

Groundwater has the potential to flood an entire mine and has been described in academic publications as a “constant source of concern” for mine operators, particularly in salt mining. 

“Salt mines are generally dry, but are susceptible to leaks and can become flooded if groundwater from overlying aquifers or surface water finds a way downward into the mined cavity through hundreds of feet of rock,” according to the Geological Survey Report. 

Salt is highly soluble in water. This solubility, according to the report, makes it so that when water begins to flow into a salt mine, the channels it flows through increase in diameter as the surrounding salt dissolves.

“Some mines leak at a slow rate for decades before a section of rock gives way, allowing what initially was a trickle of water to suddenly become a cascade and finally a torrent,” the report says. 

The representative from the DEC said the department will continue to provide comprehensive oversight of the facility, including monitoring rates of inflow, to ensure it remains in compliance with its permits and all laws and regulations in place to protect public health and the environment.” 

Judy Lucas General Assignment Reporter

Judy Lucas is a General Assignment Reporter for The Ithaca Voice. Have a story idea? Comment or question? You can reach me at [email protected] or on Twitter @judy__lucas. More by Judy Lucas

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Environmental advocates, state lawmakers want review of Cayuga Lake salt mine amid potential sale

The Finger Lakes are synonymous with upstate New York, but the health of Cayuga Lake is directly tied to a salt mine that sits beneath its shores.

For years, Cargill has faced criticism as it operated its salt mine beneath Cayuga Lake, one of the cornerstones of the Finger Lakes. Now, word of the company’s potential sale has united lawmakers and environmental advocates to protect the lake they call home.

“I learned to swim right here. And my children are learning to swim in Cayuga Lake, it's a very important part of our community," said Stephanie Redmond, program manager with Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now (CLEAN).

Redmond has spent her life on Cayuga Lake’s shore. Also calling the lake home is the salt mine, currently run by Cargill, and has been since the 1970s. An article in the business publication The Deal outlines information shared with them from an unidentified source, claiming Cargill will be selling its salt mine. Community advocates worry what that would mean for the lake if Cargill sells.

“For us at CLEAN, it's unacceptable. We have a petition, for example, urging the public to join in and demand that there be this environmental impact statement," said George Patte, steering committee of Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now.

The petition from Cayuga Lake Environmental Action now has more than 3,000 signatures, requesting an independent environmental review of the property, and a $10 billion bond to mitigate any future environmental issues.

“At some point that mine is going to close, maybe sooner rather than later. And when it does, there should be a plan for safe closure of that mine. Right now we don't think there is such a thing," said Patte.

One of the biggest concerns is a mine collapse, which happened in 2020 at Cargill’s Louisiana mine. Two widows are suing Cargill after their husbands were killed in that collapse.

Two New York state lawmakers — State Sen. Lea Webb and Assemblymember Anna Kelles — have introduced a bill that would require an environmental review and money for potential future damages at the mine. That bill currently sits in committee. According to a statement from Webb, 100,000 people rely on Cayuga Lake for drinking water.

“The value of this water quality only increases in the future and we really need to take these opportunities to safeguard this water quality for future generations," said Redmond.

According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, Cargill’s most recent permit expires this April. Spectrum News 1 has reached out to Cargill to confirm if the mine is for sale.

"Cargill remains committed to our ongoing operations at the Lansing mine and will continue (to) renew and maintain our permits. We continue to work closely with the DEC and the New York Office of General Services, that have regulatory oversight of our mining operation in Lansing," a spokesman said.

The company said it contributes $221 million to New York’s economy annually.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been edited to correct Lea Webb's name and title.

Installation image of Robert Smithson's  Cayuga Salt Mine Project  at the 1969 exhibition Earth Art at Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Robert Smithson,  Ithaca Mirror Trail  (1969)

Eight 35 mm color slides, Cibachrome print on paper and map

Collection: Tate, London

Robert Smithson,  Cayuga Salt Mine Project  (detail) (1969)

Robert Smithson placing a mirror in the Cayuga Salt Mine, outside of Ithaca New York, 1969.

Transient Materiality: Robert Smithson’s "Cayuga Salt Mine Project"

In February 1969, Robert Smithson created the Cayuga Salt Mine Project . The impetus for Smithson realizing the work was the landmark exhibition Earth Art at Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York, and marks the only time it was shown in totality. The exhibition was one of the first to explore the so-called land art phenomenon, and brought together a significant roster of international vanguard artists to create works on-site, both in the galleries and across the environs of Cornell University. 1  The Cayuga Salt Mine Project consisted of multiple components, all adapted to and made from local sites and materials. Though corresponding to Smithson’s other works and activities from the late 1960s, the project stands as something of a byzantine outlier within his practice. Perhaps owing to the incorporation of so many distinct elements comprising the project, critical analysis of the work has not been comprehensive and often misidentifies, segregates, or avoids aspects of the work.  For Smithson, however, all of the components of the Cayuga Salt Mine Project constituted one total work united by the presence, and dialectically the absence, of the mirror. 2

At the core of the Cayuga Salt Mine Project was one of the most complex manifestations of Smithson’s Site / Nonsite dialectic. This consistently involved the artist visiting a particular location, the site, and transporting some physical material from that place to an interior gallery space, the Nonsite. 3  In this case the site was the Cayuga Salt Mine, located four miles north of Ithaca on the southeastern shore of Cayuga Lake, and the Nonsite was one of the galleries at the museum, which displayed maps, photographs of mirrors temporarily placed at the site, and five separate sculptures which all contained, in various forms, mirrors, and rock salt collected from the site and arranged on the floor. 4  The work was bifurcated into two separate if mutually dependent parts. Cayuga Salt Mine Project was then complicated further by the demarcation and inclusion of a subsite / sub-Nonsite. This entailed additional mirrors placed above the mine in a nearby quarry and below the gallery in the museum’s basement. 5   Cayuga Salt Mine Project is Smithson’s only work to include this element, as well as the first and only time he utilized subterranean sites. 6

A mine was an especially apt space in which to explore and exploit the passage of time, especially one like the Cayuga Salt Mine that was still in use. 7  With the slow extraction of salt the mine was in a constant, if imperceptible state of flux; it was a space embodying physical absence, where something once was, but is no longer. The reflections caught in Smithson’s mirrors, propped up by chunks of rock salt, and captured for posterity in photographs, show the remains and details of disintegrating surfaces that have been chipped, scraped, and cut away. As Smithson stated of the interior of the mine, “There you have an amorphous room situation…There are no right angles forming a rectilinear thing. So I'm adding the rectilinear focal point that sort of spills over into the fringes of the nondescript amorphousness.” 8  Dimly lit, the mirrors enclosed and reflected a disorienting, fragmented, almost abstract space in what Smithson referred to as a “sort of rhythm between containment and scattering.” 9

The Mirror Displacements in the mine were temporary, and related to a series of works Smithson created in 1968 and 1969 in which he set up mirrors in outdoor settings, photographed them, and then often reinstalled them in a gallery replicating their initial formations. The Mirror Displacements reflect a multitude of fleeting moments, while themselves they were physically ephemeral, being always dismantled and removed shortly after being photographed. The Mirror Displacements were predicated on the dislocation between the site, the object photographed, and the Nonsite where the elements were re-formed as sculpture In the case of the Cayuga Salt Mine Project Mirror Displacement, the additional creation of a Mirror Trail further emphasized the oscillation between presence and absence, as well as more explicitly connecting the site/subsite and Nonsite/sub-Nonsite. 10  Unlike the Mirror Displacement, the Mirror Trail was an exercise in marking place and momentary reflections of presence. Beginning at the front of the A.D. White Museum, Smithson plotted eight points on a U.S. Geological Survey map and directly mimicked the interior Mirror Displacement using one of the same mirrors and photographing it at each point in succession from the museum to the mine. Subsequently marked A-H on a map that was displayed in the gallery Nonsite, these increments plot the distance between markers, as well as the time it would take to cover the distance, while the accompanying photographs mapped the transient time of the mirror’s presence at a particular location. 11  For Smithson, the “route to the site was indeterminate” and a kind of oblivion, but Mirror Trail helped to bridge the abyss. 12

Smithson did not simply enact this temporary placement of mirrors as a performance or to produce a staged photograph. As he stated, the resulting images served as “memory-traces” of vanished reflections, and remembrances of “vacant memories constellating the intangible terrains in deleted vicinities. It is the dimension of absence that remains to be found.” 13  For Smithson, the photograph was yet another dialectic, both a physical material and a trace of an “on-the-spot experience.” 14  Unlike the photograph, however, the mirror is not a trace of anything; its surface is unable to hold anything, and its reflections too fleeting. Thus, the photographs of the mirrors taken in the mine site or along the Mirror Trail do not depict the visible, singular, fixed image, but rather what is invisible. The images caught in the photographed mirrors grant access to what are but traces; one passing, suspended reflection caught in an arrested moment. Smithson’s tendency to create sculpture that, in its very form, is dispersed rather than permanent and whole, operated in the same manner. All of Cayuga Salt Mine Project's  multiple parts manipulate and amplify the transient materiality intrinsic to so much of Smithson’s work. He did not seek to erase the existence of the object nor time. The physicality of the mirror is relentless, especially when arranged into sculptural form, and yet it constantly reflects away from its own presence. A sentiment that perhaps takes on another level of poignancy when one considers that today this work is a fragmented absence of absences.

Following the brief two-month run of Earth Art , all of the elements were dismantled, dispersed, reused, or put away. Never again exhibited together in its complete form, Cayuga Salt Mine Project has now become itself a displacement of mirrors, known only through photographs. The most comprehensive reinstallation was staged, again at Cornell, for the exhibition Robert Smithson: Sculpture in 1980. By then though, the museum had changed buildings and become the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. A concerted attempt was made to faithfully reconstruct the various elements of the work, but the complete project and its particular locations were unavoidably altered.

The photographs, drawings, maps, and mirror pieces have been dispersed to and separately “reconstructed” in museum collections from Cleveland to Copenhagen. Regardless of their form, the mirrors of Cayuga Salt Mine Project continue to accost viewers with fleeting fragments of rock salt and physical space. They still present reflections that appear and disappear in rapid succession over the spatial void or “abyss” which has only grown larger with the passage of time. With its numerous, seemingly endless, fragmented parts, Cayuga Salt Mine Project can be understood as an overwhelming conglomeration of site/Nonsite, subsite/sub-Nonsite, Mirror Displacements, and Mirror Trails; collapsing under the weight of too many good ideas. By utilizing the material and conceptual possibilities of the mirror across these elements, however, Smithson physically manifested time’s intrinsic transience and its endless suspension. The complete artwork no longer exists, and yet the sheer physical presence of matter remains.

Bibliography

“Discussions with Heizer, Oppenheim, Smithson,” Avalanche , no. 1 (Fall 1970): 48-71.

Earth Art . Ithaca: Office of University Publications, Cornell University, 1970.

Hobbs, Robert C. Robert Smithson: Sculpture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981.

Junker, Howard. “Down to Earth,” Newsweek , March 24, 1969.

Kozloff, Max. “Review of Earth Art,” The Nation , March 17, 1969.

Smithson, Robert. Robert Smithson: Slideworks . Edited by Guglielmo Bargellesi-Severi. Verona: Carlo Frua, 1997.

About the Author

Marin R. Sullivan (PhD, University of Michigan) is a Chicago-based art historian and curator. She is the Director of the Harry Bertoia Catalogue Raisonné, and is co-curator of Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life , organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center. She also is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Sculpture at Cheekwood in Nashville. Sullivan is the author of Sculptural Materiality in the Age of Conceptualism (2017), as well as numerous essays and articles in publications including American Art, Art History, History of Photography , the Journal of Curatorial Studies , and Sculpture Journal .

• 1 Earth Art was organized by Willoughby Sharp, an independent curator and publisher, with the assistance of Thomas W. Leavitt (1930-2010, then director of the A.D. White Museum of Art), William C. Lipke, (then professor of art history at Cornell University, who worked to photograph the exhibition), and Marilyn Rivchin, (the assistant director of the museum who was also in charge of all the filming of the project). Participating artists were: Jan Dibbets, Hans Haacke, Günther Uecker, Richard Long, David Medalla, Neil Jenny, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, and Smithson. Michael Heizer and Walter de Maria both briefly exhibited their work, but were not mentioned in the catalogue, which was published the following year. Carl Andre had also been invited, but declined to participate. Earth Art Exhibition Archives, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. See also, Earth Art (Ithaca: Office of University Publications, Cornell University, 1970).
• 2 Robert C. Hobbs, Robert Smithson: Sculpture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 132.
• 3 In 1969, Smithson wrote a document outlining his Site/Nonsite dialectic, which was published in the catalog for Land Art , an exhibition curated by Gerry Schum for his Fernsehgalerie (Television Gallery). Gerry Schulm and Ursula Schum-Weavers, eds., Land Art (Hannover: Hartwig Popp, 1970), n.p. Occurring two months after Earth Art , Land Art included Smithson returning to the quarry across from the Cayuga Salt Mine to create another mirror piece for the exhibition which was filmed and only shown on German Public Television.
• 4 The sculptural components are sometimes referred to by different, individual titles including Mirror Displacement ; Slant Piece ; and Closed Mirror Square .
• 5 There is almost no information in any published work on the Subsite/Sub-nonsite. It is rarely mentioned by Smithson in interviews. One photograph included in Mirror Trail has been captioned as “Sub-site Fossil Quarry” with the help of Nancy Holt in Robert Smithson, Robert Smithson: Slideworks , ed. Guglielmo Bargellesi-Severi (Verona: Carlo Frua, 1997), 189. This suggests the sub-site was in the quarry on Portland Point directly across from the Cayuga Salt Mine. Additionally, both the sub-site and sub-Nonsite Mirror Displacements are captured in photographic proof sheets and show Smithson installing the work in the above-specified locations.  (from the exhibition archives now at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art).
• 6 Smithson created one other Mirror Trail in 1969, at the Paterson Quarry in Paterson, New Jersey. The Cayuga Mirror Trail is the only one, though, which was created in conjunction with a site/Nonsite project. Smithson would remain interested in sites of in-use and abandoned mines, but he would never again actually work in the interior of one. Smithson proposed the idea of a subterranean screening space in Towards the Development of a Cinema Cavern or the movie goer as spelunker (1971), but this was never realized.
• 7 This salt mine, still in operation today under Cargill Inc., was dug in 1968 to 2,300 ft., running for miles at this level underground. The mine is one of the only industrial sites in the Ithaca area. It stretches for forty miles under the lake, and is the deepest rock-salt mine in North America.
• 8 Robert Smithson, Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings , ed. Jack D. Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 189.
• 9 Ibid. Gary Shapiro takes this notion of the mine as a dark and disorienting place a step further by suggesting it is a place of complete blindness. While his statement that “The mirrors in the mine were blind or inoperative, because in normal conditions there was no illumination to allow visible reflections,” is gripping, it unfortunately seems to ignore the fact that as a functioning mine, Cayuga Salt Mine was lit. Though part of the power of Smithson’s subterranean mirror displacement comes from the fact that there is as much visible as invisible in this space, the photographs Smithson chose to represent it shows clear visible reflections. Gary Shapiro, Earthwards: Robert Smithson and Art after Babel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
• 10 Lipke writes that the Smith called this part of the project “A Mirror Trail with Mirror Displacements from the White Art Museum to the Cayuga Salt Works.” William Lipke, “Notes,” courtesy of Holt/Smithson Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
• 11 The eight locations were as follows: A: A.D. White Museum; B: U.S. Naval Reserve; C: McKinney’s Point; D: Esty Point; E: East Circle Drive/ Route 34; F: Teeter Rd./Portland Pt.; G: Sub-site Fossil Quarry; H: Cayuga Salt Works (the building you see reflected in the mirror). Smithson, Robert Smithson: Slideworks , 188-89.
• 12 Smithson, Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings , 191.
• 13 Hobbs, 132.
• 14 Smithson wrote, “I am interested in the photograph as a material as well as on-the-spot experience. One is sensate and one is more an arrested moment.” Smithson, Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings , 236.

Sullivan, Marin R. "Transient Materiality: Robert Smithson’s 'Cayuga Salt Mine Project.'" Holt/Smithson Foundation, November 2019. https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/transient-materiality-robert-smithsons-cayuga-salt-mine-project.

Despite a century of salt mining, Cargill getting local pushback on environmental issues

Cayuga Lake may not be seeing much activity on its surface lately as Ithaca’s temperatures continue to fall, but deep under the lake's shore more than 200 employees continue to operate a 13,000-acre salt mine.

And, in the courtroom, things are only heating up: Environmental action group Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now (CLEAN) — with four Tompkins County municipalities — filed an Article 78 Wednesday opposing the state Department of Environmental Conservation's decision to allow the construction of a new mine access shaft.

Ithaca's Common Council  voted  in October to sign the petition, and was joined by the towns of Ithaca, Ulysses and Union Springs in a push for further environmental review of the project and the mine.

The Cayuga Salt Mine, in operation since 1915, was acquired by Minnesota-based Cargill Inc. in 1970. Hundreds of local employees haul over 2 million tons of road salt from its Lansing location every year, providing the salt for about 1,500 locations throughout New York and the Northeast.

Stretching seven miles long and running 2,300 feet deep, the salt mine is the largest of its kind in the Western hemisphere.

But despite Cayuga's century of operation in Tompkins County, recent developments have brought public attention to the mine and its potential environmental impacts.

Cargill was granted a permit by the DEC in August to construct a $42 million access shaft farther north up the mine to enhance air quality and improve miners’ safety.

Today it takes miners about 50 minutes to travel from the shaft to the current mining location – cutting it relatively close to the state mandate that miners be able to reach above-ground within an hour from their mining location.

The sole exit of the mine is also the site where 17 miners were trapped for 10 hours 900 feet underground when the shaft elevator malfunctioned in January 2016. The mine closed for nearly two months after the incident, and reopened after the elevator was repaired and inspected.

Cargill site manager Shawn Wilczynski said the Shaft 4 construction project is purely an effort to protect the health and safety of the mine’s employees, but state Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton (D-District 125) said at an October news conference she is not so sure these are Cargill’s motivations.

By constructing a new shaft farther up the lake, Lifton noted that Cargill could potentially expand mining in the future.

Lifton announced she and state Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-District 4) wrote a second letter to the DEC requesting a denial of Cargill’s mining permit renewal, which expired November 1. They also urged the state to issue a moratorium on salt mining until a review of salt mining’s potential environmental impacts is conducted.

On Thursday, Lifton's office said they have not yet received a response from Commissioner Seggos to Lifton and Englebright's second letter .

Although Cargill’s mining permit expired in November, the company still is able to operate under their existing permit until the DEC makes a decision on Cargill's permit renewal. Cargill applied for a permit renewal in August.

As Lifton and Englebright noted in their letters, the DEC has not conducted an environmental review of the Cayuga Salt Mine since 2003. Fresh research has emerged in the past 14 years, they said, including that done by SUNY Geneseo Professor of Geology Richard Young that suggested horizontal forces in the Earth could put at risk land destabilized by mining.

In response to Lifton and Englebright’s first letter from July, however, DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said Young’s plate tectonics theory is nothing new, and does not constitute a new environmental review.

“The crux of Dr. Young’s presentation is that horizontal forces generated by plate tectonics have not been considered in the design of the mine and constitute new information that needs to be evaluated by DEC,” Seggos wrote. “Plate tectonics theory is now decades old.”

At her October press conference, Lifton pushed back, saying the DEC “says, ‘we’ve got the science down,’ but we show that they don’t.”

Lifton recalled the Retsof, Livingston County, mine collapse of 1994, saying: “The collapse says no, we don’t fully understand this science and we’re better off not taking these risks. This [moratorium] is talking about not taking those risks.”

A lot would be at risk in the case of Cayuga Salt Mine’s collapse, Lifton said: Ithaca’s tourism economy – largely fueled by the freshwater lake and gorges – and the city’s drinking water supply.

“We all have to be thinking 10 to 20 years ahead,” Lifton said in an interview with The Ithaca Journal . “People need to understand how important fresh water is. We have got to operating on precautionary principle. We just don’t take risks with such previous resources.”

After the October press conference, Tompkins County District 6 Legislator Mike Sigler, who represents Lansing, challenged Lifton’s statements, saying that even if Cargill wanted to expand mining in the future, it would require a new mining permit and a new environmental review.

“They’re not even asking for a review,” Sigler said of the two state legislators in October. “They just want this mine closed, and they don’t care about the 200 people that work there.”

Sigler is not the only one to highlight the mine's economic benefits: In October 2016, Tompkins County Industrial Agency approved a $640,000 tax abatement to Cargill to assist in the Shaft 4 construction, and a $2 million grant was allotted to the project in December 2016 at the Regional Economic Development Council awards.

Cargill, Inc. reported that its fiscal 2016 net earnings totalled $2.38 billion.

Throughout all of this – the letters to the DEC, Article 78s filed, passionate public comments made at Ithaca city meetings – Wilczynski said he has rarely been asked to voice his own perspective as an employee with the mine.

“We ultimately have the same goals in mind: to protect the lake,” Wilczynski said. “Cargill has strived for decades to be responsible company. I’m quite proud of our work.”

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Concerns mount over Cargill’s Cayuga Lake salt mine sale

• October 26, 2023 1:51 AM / Updated: October 26, 2023 4:28 PM

Local leaders, residents, and environmental advocates joined forces on Wednesday, urging New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to intervene in the impending sale of Cargill’s Lansing salt mine, located beside Cayuga Lake.

This mine, North America’s deepest salt extraction facility, has garnered criticism over concerns of increasing salinity in Cayuga Lake, jeopardizing its ecosystem and the drinking water of over 100,000 residents.

Critics argue the salt mine, owned by Cargill—a conglomerate often criticized for environmental and labor issues—has operated with minimal regulatory oversight, potentially endangering the region’s $3 billion tourism sector.

Stephanie Redmond, Environmental Researcher at Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now (CLEAN), highlighted the necessity for the Governor’s intervention, underscoring the risks involved in Cargill’s clandestine sale endeavors.

Similarly, state leaders, including NYS Senator Lea Webb and Assembly Member Anna Kelles, called for a comprehensive independent environmental review prior to any sale. Their concerns echoed worries of possible ecological disruptions from mining operations, including water and air quality impacts and potential harm to aquatic life. Cayuga Lake, a cornerstone of the Finger Lakes region, is integral to local tourism, particularly its flourishing wine industry.

CLEAN, an Ithaca-based advocacy group, stressed the urgent need for transparency in any sale proceedings and the importance of state and public oversight. They, along with other concerned entities, are demanding Cargill pledge a $10 billion bond to cover potential environmental risks of freshwater salt mining. The goal is to ensure any sale prioritizes the lake’s health and the surrounding community, with comprehensive evaluations examining the broader environmental implications.

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Advocates call for state intervention over potential sale of salt mine under Cayuga Lake

FingerLakes leaders and advocacy groups are calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to intervene in the potential sale of Cargill’s Cayuga Lake salt mine.

State Assemblymember Anna Kelles, local Finger Lakes leaders and the advocacy group Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now, CLEAN, are looking to stop what they are calling the “secret sale” of the Cargill salt mine on Cayuga Lake. Reports that Cargill has begun working with financial advisors to sell the site are leaving the leaders concerned over a lack of environmental protections surrounding the mine.

Kelles said environmental data showing Cayuga Lake as the saltiest of the Finger Lakes puts water and public health at risk.

“It’s clear by just the stats that you’ve heard and the concentration of salt that we’ve seen in both Seneca and Cayuga that the prioritization of the health of the Finger Lakes is not there,” Kelles said. “So that is something that we really need to stop and recognize.”

She said protecting the lakes impacts public health and a healthy economy and is asking Hochul to intervene with an independent environmental review and more public conversation.

“We need to be able to both protect the public health of our people and the drinking water of our people, while simultaneously recognizing that we need to protect the economic development of the area,” Kelles said. “We can do both. It is necessary that we do both.

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Hochul Urged to Protect Cayuga Lake From Cargill’s Plan to Sell Salt Mine

(Water Front, 10-25-23, by Peter Mantius)

LANSING, Oct. 25, 2023 — State and local lawmakers joined clean water advocates today in a virtual press conference to urge Gov. Kathy Hochul to protect Cayuga Lake by blocking any sudden “secret” sale of Cargill Inc.’s giant salt mine in Lansing.

“Cargill can’t skip town and leave Finger Lakes communities holding the bag,” said Assemblymember Anna Kelles (D-Ithaca). “…Billions of dollars need to be set aside by whatever company owns it. Right now it’s Cargill.”

Cargill officials have neither confirmed nor denied a media report this summer that said the company had hired Deutsche Bank to help it find a buyer.

But that news prompted concern that the mine, which extends for many hundreds of acres beneath the state-owned lake, might be sold to a buyer that fails to guard against risks of a catastrophic mine failure.

In recent days more than 1,500 people have signed a petition calling for the governor to require a “full and independent environmental review” of safety issues at the mine as well as a $10 billion environmental bond.

“An independent review will shed critical light on the on-going risks of mine collapse, lake salinization and other damage to surrounding land,” said the petition drafted by Stephanie Redmond of the group CLEAN (Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now).

State Sen. Lea Webb (D-Binghamton) concurred in a statement — read at the press conference — that calls for Hochul to “stop the sale of the mine and require a full independent environmental review before it can be sold. Any potential sale of the mine must be done transparently and with public oversight.” 

Cargill, the nation’s largest private company with annual sales of $177 billion, has operated the mine for decades with lax regulatory oversight from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

As its mining activities have gradually moved to the north, the bedrock separating the mine from the lake gradually thins, raising risks of flooding or a roof collapse. Scientists — both independent and Cargill-paid — have noted geologic “anomalies” that potentially increase those risks. 

The DEC has never required the company to prepare a full environmental impact statement for the mine, despite dire warnings from independent salt mine experts and a drumbeat of requests from the public. While the costs associated with a mine collapse or flood could run into the billions of dollars, the agency has required a bond of only $3.5 million. 

Failure to protect the tens of thousands of people who rely on Cayuga Lake for their drinking water is “frankly inexcusable,” said Chuck Tauck, owner of Sheldrake Point Winery, which is located on the lake’s western side several miles north of the mine.

“We share the concerns expressed in the petition to Gov. Hochul that the state be proactive in ensuring that the current salt mine operations are subject to rigorous environmental review,” Tauck said. “Any change of ownership … or closure of the mine (must) be subject to public scrutiny and a proposed environmental bond to protect the lake and the public from future negligence or a future disaster.”

Chuck Miller, a Cargill spokesman, declined to comment today on the petition’s demand for a $10 billion bond and an independent environmental review.

“Cargill can’t comment on rumor and speculation regarding the Cayuga salt mine,” Miller said in an email to WaterFront. “As we prepare for the winter season, we remain committed to our purpose of helping save lives and enhancing commerce by keeping roads clear of ice and snow with our salt.”

Last year Cargill pushed for a state law designed to protect its New York State market from cheaper foreign competition. But Hochul, facing pushback from state highway and sanitation officials that warned the measure would drive up their costs by millions of dollars, approved amendments that virtually gutted the protectionist legislation.

Late today, John V. Dennis, president of CLEAN, sent a letter to Hochul that urged her to block any Cargill sale of its Cayuga mine and to implement a moratorium on all salt mining there by the end of the year.

The letter also urged the governor to require Cargill to post a $10 billion bond, to “conduct an environmental impact statement,” to develop a “careful mine closure plan,” and to identify “any reasonable alternative uses (for the mine) such as storage of sequestered carbon.”

Click the link below to check out the full article

Hochul Urged to Protect Cayuga Lake by Requiring $10B Bond and Safety Exam Before Allowing Cargill to Sell Salt Mine

Mantius, P. (2023, October 25).  Hochul urged to protect Cayuga lake by requiring $10B bond and safety exam before allowing Cargill to sell salt mine . Water Front.  https://waterfrontonline.blog/2023/10/25/hochul-urged-to-protect-cayuga-lake-by-requiring-10b-bond-and-safety-exam-before-allowing-cargill-to-sell-salt-mine/

Author:  Dan Dixon

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Water Front- Peter Mantius

Environmental politics in New York's Finger Lakes

Undermining State Environmental Law, Cargill Takes Big Risks to Dig for Salt; Will Cayuga Lake Pay a Steep Price?

LANSING, Dec. 19, 2022 — If history is any guide, Cargill Inc.’s sprawling salt mine underneath Cayuga Lake is likely to flood, potentially dealing a heavy blow to the Finger Lakes.

The nation’s largest private company runs the lightly-regulated, lightly-insured 8-mile-long mine, which covers several thousand acres beneath the lake owned by and leased from the state.

Pending dangers to miners working 2,300 feet underground and to the region’s invaluable drinking water source have never been fully aired. That’s because Cargill has rebuffed efforts by grassroots activists, lakeside property owners and local municipalities to shine a spotlight on them.

Cargill has defeated a pair of civil lawsuits that sought to force the state Department of Environmental Conservation to order a full environmental impact statement on the mine. While the landmark 1975 State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR) requires an EIS for any permitted project if there “may be one or more significant environmental impacts,” lawyers for the DEC argued those cases on the company’s side and shared in Cargill’s legal “victories.”

One of the losing plaintiffs, Louise Buck, a property owner on Cayuga’s eastern shore, voiced in an affidavit her fears that Cargill was apt to make “a mistake” while mining into rock faults or other geological “anomalies” where bedrock between the mine and the lake is relatively thin or unstable.

“This will affect my legacy to my sons and their families, and we will be the poorer for it.” said Buck, who holds a doctorate from Cornell University in natural resources management.

She expressed alarm at “the inexplicable level of risk that the DEC appears to be tolerating in the face of this industry’s activities.”

History shows that salt mining is inherently dangerous.

Two years ago, a leaking roof collapsed at Cargill’s Avery Island salt mine in Louisiana, trapping 18 miners. While 16 escaped, Lance Begnaud, 27, and Rene Romero, 41, were crushed to death. 

Six weeks later the company announced that it would permanently close the mine. It began intentionally flooding it in June.

Cargill has privately settled wrongful death lawsuits filed by the widows of the two Avery Island victims.

Late this past summer, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration assessed a $356,542 penalty, which the company is contesting. The MSHA’s final report on the fatal Dec. 14, 2020 incident concluded:

“The mine operator (a Cargill subsidiary) engaged in aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence….This violation is an unwarrantable failure to comply with a mandatory standard.”

Cargill purchased the Avery Island mine and another salt mine near Cleveland in 1996 from Akzo Nobel. The Dutch company had opted to unload its remaining North America salt mining units in the wake of the catastrophic flooding two years earlier of its Restof salt mine in Livingston County, New York.

The failure of Retsof , then the continent’s largest salt mine, caused massive sinkholes, cracked bridges and ruined water about 65 miles west of Cargill’s Cayuga mine.

The Retsof and Cayuga mines lie in similar geological formations, replete with rock folds, faults and joints that raise the risk of mining accidents. 

Seismic studies ordered by Cargill have identified a series of geologic “anomalies” in the path of company’s plans to mine northward.

In February 2021, DEC announced “mostly housekeeping changes” to Cargill’s state permit that included a ban on mining within 1,000 feet of the so-called Frontenac Point Anomaly (FPA). The DEC declined a request from WaterFront to provide the FPA’s precise boundaries or to specify its location, size or shape. Instead it provided four letters from Cargill.

But the borders of anomalies have changed over the years, depending which interpretation of which study is cited. 

In the case of the FPA, a 2007 map depicts it as a 7,000-foot “deep penetrating” fault, while a letter from consultant John T. Boyd Co. to DEC a decade later shows it as an oval-shaped area far less than half that long. Cargill has already mined under parts of that fault and under other sections of the mine once deemed dangerous anomalies.

An Article 78 Petition filed in 2021 by the grassroots environmental group CLEAN (Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now) and others argued that $34 million in mined salt was riding on which version of the FPA the DEC treated as official.

(The petition was dismissed in September. A previous Article 78 Petition filed in 2017 by the City of Ithaca, CLEAN and others was denied in 2019 . Both petitions were civil lawsuits that challenged DEC’s decision to grant Cargill permits without requiring an environmental impact statement.)  

John Dennis, a CLEAN board member, recently asserted that the accepted borders of several anomalies have been “shrinking” over time, providing Cargill leeway to mine more freely in the future or to justify past intrusions into danger areas. He claimed that reducing the size of the anomalies could potentially free up nearly $200 million worth of mined salt.

Meanwhile, in its “housekeeping” changes to Cargill’s permit last year, the DEC ceded its express authority to hire or fire the consultant the company uses (and pays for). Henceforth, the permit modification stated, Cargill alone will be responsible for “retaining … funding and managing” John T. Boyd Co. The change awarded the company power to dismiss the consultant should it produce unwelcome conclusions.

John K. Warren, an international salt mining expert hired by CLEAN, said the Frontenac Anomaly “needs protection and a protective barrier, but there is a larger issue of risks from water entry due to undocumented thinning bedrock and faulting that goes beyond the FPA….

“At the moment, the level of water entry (into the Cargill mine) is safely controlled by the company via pumping, but most active salt mines are lost to flooding,” Warren said in a 2022 affidavit .

If that applies to the Cayuga mine, what are the consequences for Cayuga Lake?

The environmental impact statement feature of SEQR , the 1975 environmental law, was written to protect communities from being blind-sided by environmental calamity. The EIS process emphasizes public involvement.

The DEC has repeatedly argued in court that an EIS is not required for the Cargill Cayuga mine. But it has twice required Cargill’s main competitor for state rock salt contracts — American Rock Salt’s Hampton Corners salt mine — to prepare one.

“Cargill seems to be worried that their mining operations under Cayuga Lake would fail to pass any EIS, whereupon DEC would be compelled to shut down the mine out of safety concerns,” Dennis said.

Shawn Wilczynski, manager of the Cayuga mine, defended Cargill’s commitment to running a safe mine in a May 2022 affidavit . He said companies like Cargill “must be able to rely on the finality of government-issued authorizations, such as permits, when making decisions about where to invest business capital.”

Wilczynski said the company responded to a permit the DEC issued in 2003 by spending more then $850 million “to develop and extract resources while protecting, implementing and refining systems to ensure the stability and sustainability of the mine and Cayuga Lake.”

The DEC has required Cargill to post a “mined land reclamation bond” payable to the agency under certain circumstances if the Cayuga mine should need to be closed.

Over the decades, the amount of that bond has gradually risen from $50,000 to $500,000, to $1 million in 1999 and finally to $3.5 million in 2017 .

But that sum might not be enough to cover the costs of an unexpected mine flood, according to Richard Young, a geologist in Livingston County who has long studied the Retsof catastrophe and its messy and costly aftermath.

“Three point five million dollars seems to be a relatively small and unrealistic amount, especially without an itemized accounting or attempt to categorize the many physical and environmental issues relating to the major Finger Lakes resource,” Young said in a recent email.

An EIS process could evaluate environmental scenarios in the event of a mine flood. For example, it would analyze whether a mine flood risked raising the lake’s salinity levels to a point that it could no longer serve as a drinking water source for 40,000 people.

For property owners like Buck, an EIS could explore whether a mine flood would lower the lake’s surface level by inches or by feet and specify where sinkholes were most likely to occur.

One 2017 study found that the assessed value of 2,804 Cayuga Lake water frontage properties totaled more than $1 billion. An EIS might investigate other ways a mine flood could alter the environmental character of the lake.

Cargill’s chief spokesman for North America, Daniel Sullivan, and the company’s media inquiry email contact did not respond to or acknowledge questions about the adequacy of the bond covering the Cayuga salt mine or the company’s decision to contest the MSHA fine for the fatal incident in Louisiana two years ago.

In 2010, Cargill successfully contested another assessment proposed by MSHA — for a fatal accident at the Cayuga mine. In that case, Rolland Clark, a 63-year-old contract truck driver was crushed when a 150-ton salt bin structure collapsed on his truck.

In its final report on the incident, the federal agency had concluded that the accident was caused by the overloading of a severely corroded support system. 

The operator, Cargill Deicing Technology (also the operator at Avery Island in 2020), failed to properly inspect the support equipment, MSHA concluded. Its report characterized Cargill’s violation as “aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence.”

MSHA had proposed a fine of $70,000, but Cargill paid only $35,000.

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Published by Peter Mantius

I am a journalist who lives in Watkins Glen, NY. I write about the environment and politics on my website, Waterfrontonline.blog. For more detail on my background, see the "Peter's Bio" section on that site. View all posts by Peter Mantius

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