Marquette is home of over 6,000 tonnes of road salt. Universities campus. The same salt could end up in the water supply of Wisconsin residents or on the roads. The balance between environment and public safety.lSome Wisconsinites are trying to navigate without road salt.
We weren’t telling people to stop using salt. Were telling people to use the salt that they put down as something that has impacts and to use it in the best way possible,”Phil Gaebler water resources Engineer for the City of Madison
Charles Paradis (UW-Milwaukee assistant professor geosciences) is concerned about the salt. He’s currently working on a study concerning the potential impacts of road salt on both rivers and groundwater
We think that some of the road salt is stored in the groundwater and then released to the river water in the summer, so far the data suggests that would be the case,” Paradis said.
Road salt often contains both sodium chloride and chloride. These can pose a threat to the environment and water bodies, including drinking water.
For aquatic organisms that have evolved to live in freshwater, chloride is toxic. If we are drinking sodium, that has health impacts for us as well,” Allison Madison, sustainability and development coordinator for Wisconsin Salt Wise, said. “Chloride concentrations tend to go up faster because some of the sodium gets caught in the soil but we are also seeing sodium concentrates increase in drinking water.”
Potable waterand aquatic organisms aren’t the only things to consider when talking about the environmental impacts of road salt.
It can also alter the way lakes turn over because you create a hypersaline bottom fluid that doesn’t allow the oxygenated water of the spring melt to get to the bottom. I believe that this will have significant environmental impacts, Gaebler stated.
Madison and Gaebler stated that de-icing methods other than salt can be used to prevent environmental damage. Once the temperature drops below 15 degrees Fahrenheit most road salts aren’t effective. Other options include using sand or products with a lower melting points to create traction.
If you don’t use these practices, you can end up over-applying salt. A lot of salt they put down doesn’t have enough time to work or doesn’t stay put. Gaebler stated that salt must be given enough time to work properly and stay where it is supposed to be.
Calibrating equipment is another way to reduce salt use. It allows you to track how much salt is being used and at what rate. It is possible to take action before a winter storm comes. Anti-icing is a method that uses brine, a mixture of salt and water, to apply to pavement before a storm. The brine helps prevent snow from sticking to the pavement.
“It’s similar to oiling your skillet before you start cooking. If you oil, the spatula comes up pretty easily, but if you forget to do that and youre scraping and scraping its a lot more work,” Madison said.
Some municipalities have also reexamined the amount of salt they apply to streets. Madison stated that not all streets are equal, such as the main road.s Heavy traffic and high speeds may mean that roads need to be plowed or salted.Residents may be able to travel at lower speeds, so residential roads and areas with less traffic may not need to have their roads plowed and salted each storm.
Its not necessarily that your municipality is being lazy, there are reasons why we might not just dump more and more salt down,” Madison said.
Another concern some people have is residual salt or salt that’s left on sidewalks, streets and parking lots after a storm.
In the past, many people just said “Leave it”, the next storm will take care. I don’t think that is the best way to make salt. If there are ways that you could collect that salt or reuse it in the future or properly dispose of it that is much friendlier for the environment,” Gaebler said.
Paradis stated that this salt accumulation should concern all Wisconsinites, regardless of whether they get their water from Lake Michigan, or from a groundwater well.
You cannot just say, ‘Oh Im in Milwaukee County but only care about the surface water. Or Im in Dane County where I care more about groundwater.‘It’s not so simple. Paradis explained that this is a flawed perspective.
Megan Woolard wrote this story. She can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @MeganWoolard4