Your New Year?s Resolution: A Low Salt Diet

 Make the diet you resolve to keep this New Year’s a low-salt one. Chlorides, including the salts we use to melt ice in winter, are a major contributor to nonpoint-source pollution in our area. Committing to reducing our salt use during the snowy and icy months ahead is good for our pocketbooks and our environment!

Chlorides may become diluted, but they never degrade or break down in the environment; one tablespoon of salt contaminates 5 gallons of water which has an immediate negative impact on fish (acute threshold). Chlorides produce a salty taste in drinking water, cause adverse growth effects on vegetation, are harmful to aquatic life, and are corrosive to our vehicles, roads, parking lots and sidewalks.

You can make small changes for managing your property during snow events to help maintain and improve our water resources:
• Shovel (or use a snow blower) before you use any product; never put a deicing product on top of snow.
• Adopt the “Just Enough” principle, putting down just enough product to keep high traffic areas clear of ice.
• Sweep up un-dissolved product after a storm is over for reuse.
• Consider switching to a non-chloride deicer.
• Support changes in chloride application in your municipality.
• Inform a neighbor about the impacts chlorides have in our streams and rivers.
To view a fact sheet please visit: http://www.drscw.org/chlorides/DRSCWhomeowners.pdf

Written by John Church,  Kendall County Program Director, [email protected], Feb 1, 2013

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