Road salt, a necessary evil?

Our addiction to road salt is having an adverse effect on our environment. It’s been an issue we’ve known about for some time, but one that’s gone largely ignored.

“It’s not an easy thing to eliminate road salt because ensuring the safety of motorists on the roads is absolutely a responsibility,” says Fred Jahn, Commissioner of Engineering and Public Works for the District of Muskoka.

But are there alternatives? What sort of cumulative impact is road salt having on our fresh-water lakes, streams and rivers? Can we drastically reduce the amount we use? Those are just some of the questions a working group comprised of scientists, the MTO, private contractors and watershed representatives will attempt to answer.

The group is expected to meet for the first time this September to tackle the issue.

“The truth is there really are no alternatives that are known to be effective or if there were everybody would be using them already,” says Jahn. But he’s still hopeful that a partnership could be developed with senior levels of government to run a test-pilot in Muskoka and look for alternatives. “This is Muskoka. I don’t care if anybody else is doing something, we have to do something.”

In the meantime, developing best practices and monitoring the amount of salt the District uses is important. “We want to make some progress to at least put the least amount on by having the best practices, the best technology, and that we start monitoring that to a higher degree with GIS equipment on our road-salt trucks, so that we’re tracking all that information better,” says Jahn.

In its 2018 budget deliberations, District council approved a $50,000 expenditure towards the municipality’s Salt Management Plan and the Smart About Salt program, which comprises recommendations by a not-for-profit council studying the issue.

With an updated Salt Management Plan in hand, Jahn said staff is hoping to roll out an educational campaign not just for public works employees, but private contractors who conduct winter maintenance on private parking lots, walkways and driveways. “Road salt on parking lots is just as much of an issue as it is on Town and District roads,” he noted. “So we’re going to organize these training sessions. We have a budget for it, strongly supported through the budget deliberations by District Council, so we’re going to get that going this fall before winter,” he said.

Huntsville Councillor Brian Thompson who sits at the District’s public works committee said the issue has been talked about in the past but he believes that this time it’s more of “a comprehensive and a serious look at alternatives to road salt, and is there something we can do?” he questioned, adding that the health of Muskoka’s waterways are critical.

Steve Hernen, Huntsville Director of Operations and Protective Services noted that the Town already uses a minimal amount of salt, due to the classification of its roads. “There are only a few roads in town and Greer Road in Port Sydney that require salt application. On the rest of them we use a sand and the sand does have a four per cent salt [content] added in it to keep the sand from freezing and give it a better sticking surface, if you will.” He said when compared to provincial highways or the larger District roads, Huntsville uses very little salt.

He said there are many applications being tested to look for more environmentally friendly solutions, “and we’re looking at them too, but right now, this year, our plan is to continue using what’s called a pickled salt to get you traction.”

You can find the terms of reference for the Muskoka Salt Working Committee here.

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