Speaking of salt, Michigan where I'm from and lots of other northern states dump ton after ton of rock salt on the roads every time it snows enough to make the roads a little slippery. This is sodium in it's pure form. It's not a salt brine like a softener uses, it's rock salt by the ton. It eats cars, concrete and gets into the ground. For as long as they have been doing it, I have never tasted the first little bit of salt in well water. And where I grew up and drilled hundreds of wells, the average well depth was around 40' deep. So dumping softener salt into the ground is like a drop in the proverbial bucket. And living in Florida installing hundreds of softeners and dumping the backwash water onto the ground, i can attest to the fact that the grass loves it and I'm not tasting salt here either.