Some two hundred miles west of the Hudson River in NY lies the Finger Lakes region of New York. There, 10, 12, 14 (counts vary) long Lakes were formed by the last glaciation. The area is lakes, hills, waterfalls, small cities, towns, villages, hamlets, smallish farms and grape country. The watersheds break between the Great Lakes watershed to the north and west and the Chemung and Susquehanna river tributaries into the Chesapeake Bay system to the south and east. The Erie canal runs along the north end. The southernmost region borders Pennsylvania, which plays into this scenario.
Geologically, the area was once shallow sea. The reminder of that is left as large salt deposits, now underground. This is still important economically. Working salt mines still exist. One, near Ithaca is still in production and is a major source of road salt for areas of the eastern US, and is transported out by train. Access to the salt mines is now mostly on hillsides of the lakes, and the mines are under the lake bottoms (Detroit, too, has old salt mines below the city and Lake St Mary, the connector between Lakes Huron and Erie). These mines are deep (some nearly a mile below the surface) and are actually underneath both Cayuga and Seneca Lakes, both deep lakes, over 600 and 400 feet, respectively).
Salt mining in present form gouges out huge caverns, leaving pillars of salt as support structures. These caverns are relatively dry, not like wet limestone caves. Thus, they have been repurposed as dry undergound storage areas. Detroit has an impressive and massive underground mine . Why not make use of dry storage? Why not store liquefied gas products in free, relatively impermeable natural containers? Enter the Players and one battle below the orange eddy.
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