Lots of you are digging out of a winter blast and are looking for new ways to cover the same old winter road stories. In Seattle, an argument is brewing over whether the city should use salt or sand to make roads safer. The city says it doesn't want road salt washing into Puget Sound. Environmentalists say sand does more harm than salt. This could be a story to explore in your own community.
The Seattle Times reports:
Richard Sheridan, of the Seattle Department of Transportation, said the city is less concerned about sand because the streets are swept once the snow is gone. Seattle has not used salt since the mid-1990s, he said, because it corrodes metal bridges and "degrades" the marine environment. But he could not say which areas the city is concerned about.
Sheridan said sand is more environmentally friendly than salt, but scientists say sand damages waterways by clogging the spaces in gravel where insects live, making it hard for them to cling to rocks. Insects, a key part of the food chain, are an indicator of stream health.
Salt is less an issue because melting snow dilutes it, according to two scientists who studied effects of road salting on aquatic life.
"In general, what my colleagues have found, and I have found, is that sand actually has a greater impact, at least on stream systems," said University of Dayton (Ohio) professor Eric Benbow, an aquatic ecologist. "Sand's the problem, as much as people don't want to recognize it."
Canadian studies on road salting in the late 1990s found potential impacts on groundwater, roadside plants and creatures in streams near roads where large amounts of salt were used.
The Salt Institute provides some
helpful information about road salt.
