The Question

From: Tony Williams
To: Volunteer water monitoring
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 1:58 PM
Subject: [volmonitor] road salt accumulation

Does anyone have any information on road salt accumulation, road salt runoff to lakes, rivers, estuaries, or other concerns with road salt?
Or a link to a web page on this concern.

Tony Williams
Water Monitoring Coordinator
The Coalition for Buzzards Bay
Nashawena Mills - 620 Belleville Avenue
New Bedford, Massachusetts 02745
Tel. 508-999-6363 x.203
Fax. 508-984-7913
www.savebuzzardsbay.org

Responses

(Editor's note: Not all responses are compiled here; some were lost before being posted...)

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:45:30 -0500
From: Jeff Schloss <jeff.schloss@unh.edu>
Subject: RE: [volmonitor] road salt accumulation

Tony-
Not knowing your specifics I have listed some suggestions for starting below:

I have a host of circa 1970, 1980 and early 1990 references on road salt impacts that I can fax you if you need. The one seminal paper is by Robert Bubeck et al. (note: Lucky for you Bob was one of my graduate advisors):
Runoff of Deicing Salt: Effect on Irondequoit Bay, Rochester, New York (in Reports) Robert C. Bubeck; William H. Diment; Bruce L. Deck; Alton L. Baldwin; Stewart D. LiptonScience, New Series, Vol. 172, No. 3988. (Jun. 11, 1971), pp. 1128-1132.

This was one of the first to suggest that accumulated salts in bottom waters could prevent mixing of lakes.

It seems Science had an article on road salt each issue for a while -one of local interest may be:
Release of Mercury from Contaminated Freshwater Sediments by the Runoff of Road Deicing Salt
G. Feick; R. A. Horne; D. Yeaple
Science Vol. 175, No. 4026 (Mar., 1972), pp. 1142-1143

Also closer to home for you (in Mass.) I know Normandeau Associates in NH did a "Generic Environmental Impact Report" on road salt accumulation in February 1992 for the Massachusetts Department of Public Works Snow and Ice Control Program. I only have the draft report of this document but I expect you have better connections.

Also Mark Mattson and others at UMass did a very nice GIS analysis showing water quality impacts to streams nearest to highway networks if you were looking for cause/effect studies. It is available on the JAWA web site: http://awra.org/jawra/papers/J92059.html

I also know there has been some funded work by USGS Water Resources Research Centers on salt impact to inverts:
http://water.usgs.gov/wrri/02-03grants_new/2003MD30B.html

In terms of salt alternatives there has been a lot of work up in Alaska on using acetate compounds but they found a pretty high BOD resulted. See Lake and Reservoir Management Vol 5 (2):
Effects of Calcium Magnesium Acetate Deicer on Small Ponds in Interior Alaska
Jacqueline D. LaPerriere and Caryn L. Rea
pp. 49-57

I would also follow-up on Elizabeth' recommendations for even more current references.

-Jeff

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