Big Picture Strategy for Reducing Salt Laden Roadside Soils

Having problems establishing or maintaining roadside vegetation? Perhaps you have moved to planting more salt tolerant species. However if you are planting salt tolerant plants and not looking to fix the salt problem you are using a band aid approach to sodium chloride. While you might need to patch the road salt problem today, this will never get better unless you concentrate on solving it. This presentation will take snippets MN Pollution Control Agencies Smart Salting for Roads certification course. It will briefly illustrate the problems caused by road salt and offer a glimpse of lower salt paths forward. If you find this talk interesting, the next step is to attend a training class (perhaps with those that conduct the winter road maintenance) to get the level of detail that will help you move forward on a lower salt path.
Relevant Content – Salt damages infrastructure, water, soils and vegetation. The life cycle cost of 1 ton of salt is estimated between $800 and $3300 dollars in infrastructure damage. Chloride is a permanent pollutant to ground and surface water and these levels are on the rise across the country. One teaspoon of salt pollutes 5 gallons of water forever. Sodium degrades the soil structure. Get a Cliff Notes look at the problems with road salt and some ideas for paths forward.