Before I installed my softener I read tons of articles, mostly to see what my technology options were. I dont have a lot of room in my house and was searching for the smallest solution (in terms of physical size) that I could find that would remove the minerals from my water, not just suspend them. I had mixed feelings about removing the minerals because I knew I was eliminating many of the health benefits of drinking well water, but the minerals really kicked up my existing kidney stone issue. (There is research stating that hard water will not give you kidney stones, but says nothing about what it may do if you already have the condition). Only a salt-based system actually removes the minerals.
The article you linked to is only one of two articles I have seen that talks about the increased sodium content of water in alarming terms. As Speedbump pointed out, nearly every other article out there says that the increased sodium is not an issue, and they frequently put it in terms of other food items: 8 ounces of softened water has the same amount of sodium as a slice of bread or as a bowl of cereal.
I also read a lot about discharging the softener into my septic system or directly onto my lawn and found opinions all over the place. The one article that made the most sense to me said that the true risk from putting salt into the septic tank was not that it would kill the critters (it wont), its that the salt may add buoyancy to the water and cause the solids to rise from the bottom (or to not settle properly in the first place)
they had tested this, I believe in a state university lab somewhere.
The opinions about discharging softeners onto lawns also seem to be all over the place, with a few people claiming that their grass actually grew taller and thicker from it, possibly due to the minerals carried with the discharge. So I ran the softener discharge (along with the a/c condensate discharge) into the corrugated pipe that carries downspout discharge away from the house to the wooded area at the edge of my yard. If I did not have that wooded area, I would have just run the discharge to some discreet part of the yard rather than put it into the septic tank or let it loose near my foundation.
You mentioned reverse osmosis in a prior comment. Doesnt R.O. waste something like 10 gallons of water for every gallon output? If you are softening 55 grains of hardness and THEN losing a bunch of it through the R.O. process, that has GOT to be expensive.
I AM NOT A PLUMBER, so this is just the opinion of some stranger with an internet connection
.You now have all that extra softener discharge volume + sodium + R.O. discharge volume going into your septic system. If you havent already, have you considered discharging these onto a porous surface somewhere? I dont believe that any but maybe a few counties would regulate this, since its not even grey water. And you ARE in West Virginia.
Regarding the cost of your water
Ive read a few comments on this forum from people who are paying for municipal water and STILL paying out of pocket to remediate quality issues. I mentioned that my rural county has failed more than one quality test, and the county I just left (one of the top 5 richest in the nation) pumps their system full of chlorine. So take some comfort in the fact that you cant be certain that your true cost gap and inconvenience issues are as large as you think it might be.