The scope of this paper is a report on the performance of a ground bed which has been in operation for several years and on the problems encountered in the installation of a similar bed in similar ground.
The first of these beds is located at Salt Flats, Texas, ninety miles east of El Paso on U. S. Highway 62. The Salt Flat lake-bed is a typical western playa, a basin with no outlet, into which drain the sediments of many square miles. Adjacent to the flats are the large Guadalupe and Delaware mountain ranges which are mainly limestone with large strata of sandstone and gypsum and occasional small pockets of salt. About five miles from the ground bed in question salt has been produced by evaporation of salt water from shallow wells for over a hundred years.
Although there is only occasional surface water on this lake bed the...
