"Every winter, de-icing salts — sodium chloride, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride — battle icy roads nationwide. The effort is epic in scope: Hundreds of millions of gallons of salty substances are sprayed on roads and billions of pounds of rock salt are spread on their surfaces each year. That may lead to safer roads, but it has a real effect on the planet. In a review in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, a group of environmental scientists looked at the hazards of salts that make driving safer.De-icing salts end up in bodies of fresh water, contaminating lakes and streams and building up in wetlands. The Environmental Protection Agency’s thresholds are not high enough to protect life in freshwater, the scientists write, and “there is also an urgent need to understand how freshwater organisms respond to novel chemical cocktails generated from road salt salinization.”Then there’s drinking water."
Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/road-salt-environment-lakes/2021/12/31/2c7a333a-6651-11ec-96f3-b8d3be309b6e_story.html
DPW Director Robert "Brutus" Cantoreggi has talked of the salt issue before. Drinking water is critical to Franklin as all our water supply comes from the aquifer in the ground, hence the 'triadic' approach Director Cantoreggi frequently talks of.
You can find the details in the water works overview for 2017
Or in the storm water utility presentation from 2019
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| triadic approach to water |
