SALTY WORDS

Salt always has had importance in the United States. At the beginning of the 1800s, a prime source of salt in the fledgling new country was at the bottom of Illinois, along the Ohio River near the boundary with Indiana. Originally discovered and used by the native Indians, these salt deposits fell under the control of advancing frontiersmen. Indeed, mining the salt became quite profitable.* Thus, there is Saline County in Illinois, presumably named after salt. (As a sidebar, in the 1830s, a group of men from northern Illinois approached the bank in Shawneetown, then a bustling city in the salt area, for a loan to organize a city called Chicago. The bank turned down the loan request saying that Chicago would never amount to anything and had no future. In the 1930s, the Ohio River flooded and wiped out Shawneetown. The whole city moved up a hill and left behind what is now Old Shawneetown and the crumbling walls of a bank building.)

Today, the health effects of use of salt to flavor food continues to be controversial. However, quite a different controversy involves the use of salt in residential self-regenerating water softeners that discharge salty waste brine into the wastewater system.

This concern particularly exists in drought prone areas of the United States, such as California. Because of the scarcity of fresh water sources, utilities are under pressure to reuse or recycle treated wastewater. Obviously, salty recycled wastewater is not feasible for most purposes. However, conventional wastewater treatment plants are not able to adequately treat high salinity influent without installing costly advanced treatment technology.

Accordingly, in California, some municipalities enacted ordinances banning use of self-regenerating water softeners. Courts, however, rejected such ordinances on the ground that state law pre-empted local action. While there is no state ban, the legislature did enact a protocol that enables local bans when necessary to enable wastewater systems to comply with state effluent discharge standards (Assembly Bill 1366).**

Some cities now offer financial incentives to homeowners to remove their water softeners altogether or to replace them with so-called demand-initiated regeneration ion exchange softeners.

Interestingly, one method to reduce salinity levels in brine is through use of the reverse-osmosis process. A recent report states that salty water which does not pass through the membrane may be able to be harvested to run an electricity generation turbine. So, salt have have power.***

Obviously, not all sources of water--particularly well water--are of the same quality or of good quality. Often they contain high levels of naturally-occuring minerals that adversely affect taste, odor and color, producing scale in pipes and discoloring in appliances and laundered clothing. Accordingly, residential water softeners can be expected to remain in demand.

Over the years, some water utilities that tied to operate central softening equipment at their treatment plants found that the process could be unreliable, resulting in customer complaints, and removed such equipment from service.

From time to time, some have asserted that water softeners can have a negative impact on septic tanks. It has been reported that Texas has imposed a ban on water softeners that discharge to septic tanks, asserting that high salt brine can destroy beneficial bacteria. However, recent scientific reports have disputed this assumption and even have suggested that salt can be beneficial for the septic tank process.

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*Owens, "Isaac White And Manliness In Early Illinois,
Journal of Illinois History, Spring, 2014

**See"Stopping A Problem At Its Source",
WE&T Magazine, July, 2014, p.22

***"The New Power Of Salt Water", Wall Street Journal,
August 30-31, 2014, p.C-4