Road Salt: Helpful to Drivers, Harmful to the Environment

Are you disturbed by the whitish-gray coating on shrubs along our roadsides each winter? Does it bother you to come across heaps of road salt hovering over a stream bank? The answers to these questions should be yes! Road salt, which is composed primarily of sodium chloride, degrades vegetation, aquatic ecosystems and, of biggest concern to URWA, water quality. You might ask why your community looks like this every winter and stay tuned into how responsibly your municipality’s road crew is maintaining roads.

There is no single solution to reducing road salt contamination of local waterways and groundwater. It will require a combination of approaches including:

• more efficient application of road salts using computerized trucks, driver training, and accurate weather information to more accurately time road salt applications
• better storage practices utilizing sheltered storage facilities with stormwater treatment and control
• management practices to reduce losses during transfers
• management of equipment washwater to minimize releases
• locating “snow dumps” away from rivers and groundwater recharge areas, and collecting and treating snow dump runoff
• use of environmentally friendly road salt alternatives, such as calcium magnesium acetate, in sensitive areas
• education of homeowners and business owners about the environmental impacts of road salt
• policy changes such as moving away from bare pavement policies for secondary roads
• lower speed limits on roadways immediately following snow storms
• renewed emphasis on plowing