Virtual Tour

The Outdoor Solar Plant

Salt Ponds

The San Francisco Bay is one of only two coastal salt works operations in the entire United States. It is an ideal area for salt making, thanks to the long, shallow topography of the Bay's bottom, the clay soils, and our Mediterranean climate - just enough rain in the fall, winter and spring...dry summers...steady breezes and plenty of summer sunshine.

The first stop on our tour of Cargill’s 12,000 acre system is the intake pond -- the first in a series of evaporation ponds (sometimes called concentrators or concentration ponds). This is where we introduce water into our pond system. San Francisco Bay water is only 71 percent as saline (salty) as sea water: it contains 2.5 percent sodium chloride, vs. the ocean's 3.5 percent. So this water has a long way to go before it yields its pure salt crystals.

Like all our salt ponds, this intake pond is surrounded by a short levee, a wall of dirt that separates it from the Bay and other ponds. You'll note that the levees are often curved - they're following the contour of the landscape - usually the original shoreline and historic property lines - ensuring that one portion of the pond is not significantly deeper than the others. Many of these levees were first built more than a century ago. Today, they're maintained by our wooden dredge, the Mallard II.

Virtual Tour

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