Advocates are pushing for better education and salt practices, saying simply using more salt isn’t necessary to make roads and sidewalks safer.
During icy Midwest winters, a Chicagoan’s step onto the sidewalk is often met with a familiar crunch underfoot. But salt, used to keep roads safe for driving and sidewalks safe for walking, comes with an ecological price: It ends up in our water, and once it’s there, it’s almost impossible to remove.
But ecological effects of chlorides on fish and insects begin to be seen at even lower levels, around 150 milligrams per liter, said Jennifer Hammer, the director of watershed programs and ecological restoration for the Conservation Foundation, which is working with the 48 municipalities and agencies.
Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation workers fill trucks with salt on Feb. 1, 2022, inside the city's largest salt dome on Grand Avenue in West Town.“There’s so much salt, you can see that it’s way overused,” she said last week after fleets of salt trucks had descended on the roadways ahead of a snowstorm. “Like everything else, we need to be thinking about the environment.”
Road salt can wash into rivers and streams, sewer systems and filter through the soil into groundwater. Once it is in water, there isn’t much municipalities can do to remove it. Wastewater treatment plants were never designed to remove chloride ions in the water that enters their systems. The only way municipalities could practically treat potable water for chlorides, Kuykendall said, is an expensive and wasteful process called reverse osmosis.
On routes the department treats with brine, Kuykendall said, chloride emissions have gone down by about 38% compared with routes using rock salt. Waves from Lake Michigan crash along the shores near North Avenue Beach in Chicago Feb. 17, 2022, picking up any salt on the walkway. But because the city’s wastewater flows away from its own drinking water, its chloride levels can affect other communities.
But Kuykendall and other smart salt advocates are pushing for better education and better salt practices. People should understand, they say, that simply using more salt isn’t necessary to make a surface safer.
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