The Problem with Road Salt

Winter is a dangerous time to be on the road. Between snow, freezing rain, ice, and the ever-deceptive black ice, hundreds if not thousands of accidents, many of them fatal, happen with every new winter storm. It’s no wonder that we stay off the roads in bad weather, but even then, you don’t always have a choice in the matter, and that’s when you’re thankful for snow plows and for your municipality salting the roads. Indeed, salt seems like a miracle-cure for the weather that ails you – melting ice and snow and keeping the road clear and safe. Yet there is a consequence to every action, and that includes the salting of roads. Adding salt to the environment in such large amounts can have a deleterious effect on vegetable life, the water shed, and more.

Salt in Your Lawn

Let’s begin with the most obvious problem posed by salting roads: the destruction of vegetation. Salt absorbs moisture, which is largely what plants are made out of and, thus, it kills those plants. Additionally, by absorbing water, salt prevents those plants from becoming rehydrated, further destroying nearby vegetation. In the end, this can ruin lawns and other properties, killing bushes, grasses, flowerbeds, and more. Winter will pass and the snows will melt – only to reveal a long-dead lawn underneath it all!

Salt on the Road

The other issue facing municipalities that use salt to clear their roads during winter is just what that salt is doing to the roads themselves. It may look like a well-paved road can take any amount of abuse, but much of the abuse heaped upon it is microscopic in scale. Specifically, when salt trucks clear roads, they use a treated mixture of salt and chemicals intended to maximize the process, but this mixture quickly eats away at the asphalt of the road, causing cracks to appear and creating weaknesses in the whole structure of the road. Consequently, you end up with some of the most notoriously poor roads in the country, and that’s to nobody’s benefit.

Salt is quite the miracle during the winter – but it has its costs, and that bill has to be paid… sooner or later.