By Sandy Barbic
The use of road salt on streets and sidewalks to keep them safe during winter is a necessary evil we all have come to expect. We may not realize, though, that all of this road salt is extremely harmful to our surface and groundwater and all the species that depend on freshwater for life. The salt has a cumulative effect, adding up over the years and permanently remaining in the water supply. One teaspoon of salt will pollute five gallons of water.
We at Summit Soil and Water Conservation District, along with other northeastern Ohio partners, are promoting Winter Salt Awareness Week, Jan. 27-31. Winter Salt Awareness Week is the brainchild of the Wisconsin “Salt Wise Partnership,” created to spread education and awareness about road salt use and its hazards.
To learn more about this program, go to wintersaltweek.org/ where you will find many resources for communities and individuals.
Effects of salt
Regular road salt (rock salt) is Sodium Chloride, NaCl. It’s the same as table salt except the grains are larger and granular in texture. We started using road salt to melt snow and ice in New Hampshire in 1938. It worked, and by the winter of 1941, 5,000 tons of salt were used nationwide. Today, we use around 20 million tons. Because the road salt runs off the road during rainfall and snowmelt, all of this salt has increased the salinity or saltiness of our water to a point where it has negative effects on our environment, including plants and animals, and has a negative impact on our drinking water.
Toxic
Freshwater fish and other freshwater plants and animals have not adapted to salt like the animals in the ocean; they can’t survive in salty water. Salt is not only toxic to aquatic life, but the runoff deposits salt in the soil, and plants can’t survive when they take it in their vascular system. Excess levels of salt in the soil root zone limit the ability of plant roots to absorb soil water.
Water normally flows osmotically from low salt concentration to higher salt concentration. Roots uptake water normally by having a higher salt concentration than the surrounding soil water pool. When there is more salt in the soil than the roots, the osmosis doesn’t work to the plants’ advantage but works the opposite way and inhibits growth. The same is true for the fish and bugs because they lose water from their bodies and become dehydrated.
Besides the disastrous effects road salt has on plant and animal life, there is also a great deal of damage to vehicles and infrastructure of all kinds due to corrosion of the metals.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set limits on the allowable levels of chloride in water but hasn’t yet put limits on sodium. In high concentrations, both sodium and chloride are harmful not only to aquatic organisms and other wildlife, but sodium is especially bad for humans with high blood pressure.
What to do
What can people do about this salty problem? People want safe streets and roads in the winter. Most people think the more salt the community dumps on roads, the safer they will be. That isn’t the case.
Road salt is ineffective below 15 degrees F. So, it doesn’t matter how much salt you put on; the snow won’t melt in those temperatures. When it does melt, though, all that salt ends up in streams, rivers and lakes, and the community has wasted a lot of money because salt is expensive. As residents, we need to be more reasonable and stay off the roads unless necessary in a storm.
Start with yourself
There is hope for solving this problem, and we can supply some hopeful solutions on our own sidewalks and driveways:
Shovel your snow early and often since that reduces the salt you will need to de-ice the surface. Also, pile your snow in various locations, so the salt is not concentrated in one spot when the snow melts.
If you live in urban or suburban areas, keep salt away from storm drains because that is a direct route for runoff into the stream. Only apply salt to the walkways you use all the time.
Remember the temperature limitation and don’t apply when the temperature is below 15 F. Sweep up the extra road salt. That will also keep it off your grass and out of your soil.
Use a potassium acetate de-icer if you have pets and wash their feet after walking them. One 8-ounce coffee cup of salt will de-ice 250 square feet, the same area as 10 sidewalk squares. Go easy.
Another great resource is the Izaak Walton League’s road-salt watch program that people can participate in at iwla.org/water/stream-monitoring/salt-watch.
You can also obtain great information about salt intake from the U.S. Department of Agriculture at myplate.gov/tip-sheet/be-salt-smart.
(Sandy Barbic is the outreach coordinator for Summit Soil and Water Conservation District She can be reached at sbarbic@summitoh.net or 330-929-2871.)
