Winter road treatments help to keep us safe on the roads, however there are some hidden dangers of road salt and our freshwater ecosystem. Dr. John Jackson, Senior Research Scientist of Stroud Research Center, shared how the road salt makes its way into our fresh water.

“a portion, maybe half, maybe a little more, maybe less, immediately goes into our waterway by way of the snow melt and runoff. So, we'll see a spike in salt in the stream within hours of snow, or especially an ice event. icing goes because it's sleet right then and there there's a lot of runoffs to the stream, so we'll see a big spike.”

The highest spikes occur once the salt hits the seawater.

“In one case we've actually measured it being twice as salty as the ocean. And then the second way the salt enters the stream. during the infiltration portion. So, every time it rains or the snow melts, there's a huge chunk of that water actually goes into the ground. And when it's salty water.”

The road salt is extremely harmful to the plants and animals that live in the waterways.

“These are animals that are used to being in fresh water, just like you and I are used to drinking fresh water. We don't like drinking ocean water. uh we didn't evolve we're not we're not actually physiologically capable of doing well if our drinking water was salty it would be a big strain on us and so the plants and animals that are in that salty water experience that same physical strain um it's a water balance challenge first of all just like you and me being in the desert if you're in the desert you have a That's the first concern from my background.”

The salt is also aging our infrastructure and contaminating our drinking water.

“So we're seeing an increase in basically an acceleration of the aging of our infrastructure. So we already have infrastructure challenges and our road salt use is making that worse. The second thing is there's drinking water concern. Like I said, we drink fresh water, not salt water, and our water is It's safe to say today our water is probably twice as salty as it was 20 years ago, and 20 years ago was twice as salty as it was 40 years ago. This is a new phenomenon. the science as well as the management of the issue is still evolving.”

Listen to the podcast to hear the entire conversation and what we can do as local residents to minimize those negative effects of road salt on our freshwater ecosystems. 

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