Pennsylvania Legacies #238: Saline Solution

Josh Raulerson (00:01):

It is Friday, August 29th, 2025, and from the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, this is Pennsylvania Legacies. I’m Josh Raulerson. The Labor Day Weekend marks the unofficial end of summer, and soon we’ll be looking down the barrel of another Pennsylvania winter. That means streets, highways, driveways, and parking lots will soon be coated with coarse rock salt, typically much more than is needed to prevent accumulation of ice and snow. And while slippery road conditions can be a serious safety hazard, oversalting doesn’t make anyone safer.

In fact, because salt from roadside runoff accumulates underground over time, bad salting practices can do significant damage to water quality, ecosystems, infrastructure, and even human health. Not only that, excessive salting incurs unnecessary costs for municipalities, businesses, and property owners, contributing to shortages that make roads less safe for everyone. Meanwhile, valid concerns over liability tend to incentivize property managers to err on the side of too much, rather than too little, salt.

And though many of our neighboring states have taken steps to reign in oversalting and PennDOT does have training and protocols in place, overall, Pennsylvania lacks statewide regulations and policies on the subject. New legislation introduced this year in the State House would change that. But there’s also work to be done in educating the public, engaging with local governments, and gathering data.

That’s where the recently formed PA Road Salt Action Working Group comes in. It’s a team effort comprised of volunteers from community watershed organizations, master watershed stewards, county conservation districts, state and local agencies and nonprofits, including PEC’s Affiliate Group, the Pennsylvania organization for Watersheds and Rivers. The working group grew out of data collection and advocacy work by one local CWO, the Little Lehigh Watershed stewards. Mary Rooney is the group’s president, and Jennifer Latzgo is its Director of Education and Engagement. They’re our guests this month on the podcast. Jennifer, Mary, welcome to Pennsylvania Legacies.

Mary Rooney (02:07):

Great, thank you.

Jennifer Latzgo (2:08)

Yeah, thanks a lot.

Josh Raulerson (02:09):

Can you start off by telling me a little bit about your organization, the Little Lehigh Watershed Stewards, sort of the background, your mission, who’s involved, what you guys you do, and how you’ve worked with our affiliate organization, the Pennsylvania Organization for Watersheds and Rivers?

Mary Rooney (02:24):

I can take the first stab at that. Little Lehigh Watershed Stewards started five years ago. We were basically, I’ll call it an incubator from the, there’s a watershed coalition of the Lehigh Valley here, and they have a great program where they help watershed groups get started. Jennifer and I are both master Watershed stewards and they recruit in the master watershed stewards classes to find new volunteers and match those volunteers up with the watershed groups in their region. So that’s how I got started. Jennifer, I think that’s how you got started too. Back in 2000, the little Lehigh Watershed has about 230,000 people in it. So it’s not small; it feeds city Allentown and all of the suburban areas around there. It also supplies water for the likes of like Nestle Water and Sam Adams and stuff like that. So many water users, there was no watershed group associated with that.
And the Watershed Coalition had been trying for multiple years to get a watershed group started. And honestly, COVID proved to be the right time to do it because I, I sat in another volunteer meeting one night and watched all of my volunteer commitments just disappear because everybody was stopping doing what they were doing. So a couple master watershed stewards and a couple travel unlimited guys who weren’t doing anything. Got it. Rolling. And many great new volunteers like Jennifer, and we have a board of six have come on board and really rounded out what we do projects. Jennifer heads up all the education. I’ll let her talk about that. We try to do some advocacy, outreach, invasive species removals, trash cleanups, those types of things.

Josh Raulerson (04:09):

Obviously, you all have your hands full in your watershed. There’s a lot to focus on, and you just named a few things. We’re here to talk today specifically about road salt, which is not unique to your area, clearly. But I’m wondering how did that issue come to your attention? What prompted you to want to take action on road salt in particular?

Jennifer Latzgo (04:27):

Well, actually this would be in 2023. There was some different conferences in, in the region that our members attended. And the road salt issue was really seemed like a, a very critical thing to pay attention to at that time, and we wanted to find out about its impacts in our watershed. So with the help of STR Water Research Center, we actually decided to do two sort snapshot projects. We did one in 2023, and we did indeed find chloride in our watershed. And then we did a second one that encompassed more of our watershed in 2024. And we, we found the same issues. So that kind of led to us really looking at, all right, now we know we’ve got chloride here, what are we going to do about it? And that was a very important thing for our members. They didn’t just want to go out and collect data for data’s sake. They wanted to, you know, if we’re going to go through the trouble to do that, they wanted to actually use it to bring about some kind of change.

Josh Raulerson (05:34):

And right away, I find myself wondering — if, you know, you all had to take it upon yourselves as citizens to gather this data — it seems like there might not be a whole lot of publicly available information about the prevalence of this issue out there?

Mary Rooney (05:48):

There is a fair bit of data we have learned through like our PA Road Salt group. We have a meeting once a month now, and we’ve brought in different speakers and we’ve brought in speakers from Susquehanna River Basin Commission and Delaware River Basin Commission. And they’ve educated us on the amount of chloride data that is out there through USGS and EPA and other sources. But I don’t think the average person knows about data being out there. Even, it’s a constant theme among watershed groups, like, how do we find out data about our watersheds? And through our outreach, we found out that the average person really has no understanding of the impact of road salt and the potential tide to chlorides and the pervasiveness and cumulative properties of it in the watersheds in the groundwater.

Josh Raulerson (06:38):

Okay. Well, this would be a great time to then start talking a bit about those impacts. How does road salt affect water quality? Things like plant and animal life? I think maybe there are some human health implications as well.

Jennifer Latzgo (06:49):

So basically what happens when road salt is applied to parking lots, roads, paths, anywhere after the snow event, it ends up moving around. A lot of it gets washed onto the ground. Some of it ends up in streams, it goes directly in, and it causes those big spikes in salt levels in the winter time. And some of it goes down storm drains and ends up in the streams that way, but also a lot of it just gets washed off those impervious surfaces and onto the ground. And then as it gets onto the ground, it just basically moves down deeper and deeper. The chloride ions are actually very, very mobile. They don’t really attach to anything, so they’re very easily moved down and basically end up down in the ground water. And what happens then is the amount of chloride just builds up and accumulates over time.

You know, ground water doesn’t move around very fast, it’s just building up underneath that. And our sort of snapshots showed that because we were basically testing the water for chloride in the summertime when the streams were at base flow and at that time of year, they’re actually being fed by the ground water, not by rain. Okay. We were actually showing how much chloride is in the whole system year round. So that’s a really big issue. So that, that affects, once it gets into groundwater, gets into streams in the groundwater to, that’s where our drinking water comes from. It either comes directly from wells that go down deep into the ground or it’s pulled from streams. So that means that, that our drinking water is getting saltier and saltier, which is an issue. It’s also causes a lot of environmental issues. Chloride effects the abilities of a lot of aquatic creatures to perform osmosis regulation.

(08:48):

And so it affects macro invertebrates, all the tiny creatures in, in the streams. It, it affects fish, it can impact their reproductive ability. It affects aquatic plants, basically the whole, the whole food web is affected by it. So there are those effects. It has effects on soil, permeability of soil and fertility of soil. And then the other big thing is that it has a big, big impact on our infrastructure. It causes a lot of damage to things like bridges, roads, culverts, it degrades concrete surfaces, surfaces when it gets brought inside buildings in the wintertime, it messes up floors, which is very costly, causes damage to cars and vehicles to the tune of billions of dollars a year in damage. So those are some of the effects. It’s pretty wide ranging.

Mary Rooney (09:50):

I mean, just so you know, locally, for us particular motivation was our own watershed has seen about a 220% increase in the chloride concentration since 2021 [sic.]. So in 23 or 24 years. And that is really good data that was available through water testing done at one of the inlets of the water supply. So that’s lab oriented data, not just volunteers going out. So that was our, our initial motivation was understanding that our own drinking water is though it, it remains safe at this point. The trend is not good, and there’s not a lot of regulations in Pennsylvania related to chloride. So this is really an effort of getting the public aware of a situation and trying to help people develop a different sense for what is the right amount of salt. Again, we’re not saying don’t salt, we’re just saying use just the right amount in the right place at the right time.

Josh Raulerson (10:52):

Well, I mean, the cumulative nature of it makes this kind of alarming. When you think about, you know, drinking water impacts, at what point is it an active, you know, health threat to consumers? I imagine probably some people are sensitive, more so than others, that might already be struggling. But like, I guess, at what point is it no longer safe to drink just to drink this salty groundwater? And how close are we to that point?

Mary Rooney (11:15):

I’ll take the first stab. I mean the, the concentrations of chlorides, and we’re going to speak specifically about chlorides right now. Those salt to sodium chloride, especially for community groups, chlorides is the easier of those two chemicals to measure. So that is why chloride groups and a lot of instant data monitoring type measurement instruments will look for chlorides as opposed to sodium. So just we put that out there while we’ll speak primarily of chlorides. But Jennifer, it’s 230 milligrams per liter. Parts per million, right. For the EPA number it’s either 2 30, 2 50, let me check. But Philadelphia has seen higher chloride levels than say Allentown has seen. It’s definitely directly corresponds to the level of development. People sometimes in their own private wells have seen the worst situations because they’re a user of one as opposed to the dilution that comes from a larger system.

Josh Raulerson (12:14):

So when you talk about the “right amount” of salt, what’s the right amount? And I guess we can break that down by homeowners and people just maintaining a driveway and a sidewalk versus more commercial or institutional, municipalities… what’s the right amount of salt?

Jennifer Latzgo (12:28):

Okay, so for homeowners, it’s actually way less than most people think. One 12 ounce, like coffee mug size container of salt is enough for a 20 foot driveway. Okay. And the little particles should be about three inches apart. You actually don’t need to feel that crunchy feeling underfoot for to have enough salt down. So we kind of basically ask people to use, you know, as little as possible to keep things safe. That’s for household. For other situations, for municipalities, we’re talking 200, wait a minute, what is it, Mary?

Mary Rooney (13:11):

It is 100 to 300 pounds per lane mile.

Jennifer Latzgo (13:14):

Yeah, that’s it. A hundred to 300 per lane mile

Mary Rooney (13:18):

From different states. Pennsylvania doesn’t have a statewide best management practices manual, but state such as Wisconsin, Minnesota New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, Maryland, even, they all have manuals and there’s a lot of salt application rate charts out there. And the ideal is about a hundred to 300 pounds per lane mile. We’ve talked to multiple townships and we’ve seen numbers, well, well above a thousand pounds per lane mile being put down. So again, we aren’t saying don’t salt, we’re just trying to have everybody sort of reel back what everybody’s doing. The, the concept of the roads need to be safe and everything needs to be blacktop within four hours of the storm ending. And, you know, every sidewalk in every mall and every path in every parking lot needs to be pristine too quickly. You know, and they do that by putting extreme amounts of salt down so that once they’ve gone through with the plow, they, none of the contractors have to come back again, because they’ve kind of put so much salt down to cover all bases. Whereas a more judicious, a calibrated, you know, use a calibration, use a application rate chart. And when you do those things, you put a measured amount down that will do the job and keep people safe without going to extremes.

Josh Raulerson (14:41):

I imagine you save a little money, too, then, if you’re not using three times, five times as much as you actually need.

Jennifer Latzgo (14:47):

Yeah, definitely. There are significant cost savings, not only in materials, but also if best management practices are used. There are significant savings in labor costs because by using certain practices, like for example, brining, brining is putting down a 23% solution of water and salt on the road. It’s done before the ice or snow event happens. And then once the snow comes down, the brine prevents it from actually bonding onto the road. What that does is it makes it much easier to keep the roads clear afterwards with any kind of plowing. So something like that definitely cuts down on, on labor costs. And also it can be done ahead of time when staff are on their day shifts. You don’t have to pay people overtime to come in to do it. So it, that can be very helpful. Another best management practice that we’ve heard about is using what are called segmented snowplows. And these are snowplows that have a blade that is actually divided into about two foot long sections. And each section is spring loaded so that these, these different sections actually float over the road surface and conform to it much better. And what that means is you can actually run a wider plow blade because it does actually hug onto the road surface better, and that also reduces the amount of times that you have to go back and plow that section of road, which can reduce your, your labor costs as well.

Josh Raulerson (16:23):

So to give the benefit of a doubt to, like, township managers and people making decisions about how much and how often and when to treat road surfaces, surely there is some awareness of the problem. And probably, I would like to think, there’d be some interest in saving money if that’s on, you know, if there’s an opportunity to do that. What’s preventing the people making these decisions from adopting more sustainable practices? Is it mostly an education problem? Is it that they simply don’t know better? Or what are some obstacles to getting these changes made?

Mary Rooney (16:56):

The first thing we want to say is all those guys out there doing winter maintenance or trying to do a good job, I mean, there, there’s no, there’s no blame here. There’s no pointing fingers because we aren’t out there in the, you know, three o’clock in the morning driving a snow plower, putting salt down, we’re sitting cozy in our home. Those guys are out there doing that work. So let, let’s make that statement first. Some of the township people that I’ve spoken to said that they get calls, they get calls from the public, you know, demanding that the roads be clear and, you know, saying, why aren’t you guys out here? And, you know, my roads haven’t been cleared. And so they get those calls from their own constituents making those demands. I think there’s some, this is the way it’s always been done in the townships.

(17:40):

You may have somebody who had took some training but didn’t really align with what they were taught when they were doing it. And they’ve moved into a position of management. And I think some of that stuff just gets passed down. I did write to my local newspaper ’cause there were so many articles here in the Lehigh Valley last winter about all the townships, you know, we’re running outta salt and the townships are running outta salt and everybody’s running outta salt. So, you know, I put a couple articles out there basically saying, well, you know, one thing to consider is if, if everybody made the effort to not put as much down to actually put the calibrated amounts down the PennDOT, you know, recommended amounts down, then if you didn’t put a thousand down and you put 300 down, there might be that extra six or 700 sitting around for the next event.

Mary Rooney (18:24):

So it’s a combination of a lot of factors. And again, we, a lot of the things we’re proposing, we’re asking people, you know, to calibrate their equipment, you know, to have some basic training. Like even what Jennifer saying, not a lot of people are aware of the negative effects of chlorides. I always joke, I’m like, we put salt in our pasta water, why would we think that salt and water is going to be a problem? But it’s a cumulative effect. It’s not that it’s done once this year, it’s the fact that it’s been done excessively starting in the seventies, that it’s becoming a potential contaminant, you know, maybe a future contaminant if we’re not at that point. Now, the other thing people don’t know is you can’t remove salt with a water treatment plant. Most people believe that water treatment will be all they need to take care of the salt.

(19:09):

And we talk to them about, you know, desalinization and all those, you know, expensive things you hear about in California and Saudi Arabia. If we got to the point where we had, you know, 250 milligrams a liter of sodium and chlorides in our water, people would start tasting it. You know what I mean? And at that point, it’s getting to be too late. Yeah. You, you can’t take it and work backwards. So we’re trying to say, let’s, let’s start now and work forwards for the best goal, because it’s a lot cheaper to not put it down than to try to get it out once it’s in there.

Josh Raulerson (19:45):

I wondered too, if some of the hesitation or slowness to adapt is related to liability concerns or… certainly, like, homeowners, you hear these horror stories about if somebody slips on your driveway, suddenly you’re, you know, slapped with a lawsuit. Is that a significant driver of what we’re seeing?

Jennifer Latzgo (20:01):

Yeah, definitely is. And, and that’s what we’ve heard. One of the biggest areas where this is happening is with private contractors. They put down possibly about half of the road salt here in Pennsylvania. And there’s concern, you know, by the people that hire them about liability. What we are looking at is actually some actions that have been taken in other states. New Hampshire has introduced liability protection as part of a program. They have their called Green Snow Pro, and if contractors take training, special training, and also then if they agree to certain kinds of record keeping, they are given protection from liability. And that program’s been going on for long enough now that there has recently been a challenge to it. There was an attempted lawsuit and it was not successful. So other states around are looking at this also ’cause everybody’s interested to see how it’s going in New Hampshire. This could be really a, a huge help with this whole issue. So we’re, that’s one of the long term goals of our organization is that we, we kind of hope that in the long term Pennsylvania might actually also introduce a similar kind of a program.

Josh Raulerson (21:25):

Speaking of your organization, I think you’re referring to the statewide working group rather than your local watershed organization? Correct?

Jennifer Latzgo (21:32):

Yeah, yeah. I’m talking about Pennsylvania Roads Salt action. After Mary and I, we were working on this locally, we started looking around for information about this issue statewide regionwide. And it seemed there were a lot of people that have been working on it, but not really necessarily a whole lot of results. And we saw a need for a more cohesive cooperative effort on this. So back at the beginning of the year, we started a working group and with the help of Power, we actually accumulated a group of, I think we’ve got about over 50 people, right? Mary at this point, something large, 60, 60 people from a wide range of different areas. We’ve got master watershed stewards, we’ve got members of Delaware River Basin Commission, Susquehanna River Basin Commission — Mary help me, all the other groups —

Mary Rooney (22:32)

Watershed groups, soil Conservation Service volunteers, water authorities. It’s a coalition of both professionals and volunteers. And we are all working together as volunteers on this issue where the professionals are chipping in as partners to push different protocols and ideas. You know, again, I put up on the screen our goals, you know, develop protocols and strategies for talking to municipalities and large landowners about salt reductions. That would be, as Jennifer referred to, half the salt that goes down is not being put down by PennDOT or municipalities is being put down by hospital systems, Walmarts, you know, all of the big landowners, all logistics. It’s huge here. I’m sure it’s huge across the state. Those logistics facilities, you know, we’re going to create a central resource of good quality materials. I mean, there’s 10,000 documents out there on roads. All that’s actually overwhelming. We’re trying to curate, you know, five or 10 different good quality documents on each topic that people can go to and not be overwhelmed by the quantity of information out there.

(23:35):

You know, encourage PennDOT, too. PennDOT does train, PennDOT has trainings. They have an LTAP program, they do training, winter maintenance training, they offer trainings for municipalities. We haven’t seen a good correlation between the taking the PennDOT trainings and then a, a, a decent implementation of the best management practices. So we want to encourage PennDOT to look at that issue and why, you know, they’re not getting kind of the bang for their outreach buck, you know, look for grant money to help the municipalities try to figure out, you know, buying a new plow is an expensive proposition, calibration’s cheap, you know, but maybe there are some things that we could find some grant money for, you know, and again, try to encourage the state lawmakers that’s this House Bill 664 that we’re talking about. You know, there is no legislative action, not really any significant regulatory action on road salt here. So this first bill, which is in committee right now, we really encourage people to contact their legislators and say, Hey, we’re interested in this and, you know, let’s push this through and get it to a wider vote in the state.

Josh Raulerson (24:38):

And is the liability protection the focus of the legislation? Or is it sort of a, a suite of approaches?

Mary Rooney (24:44):

A suite of approaches. I mean, starting with the basics. We don’t even have a statewide best management practices manual for municipalities trying to find some ways to outreach for communication to the public. It’s, it’s a whole suite of activities. It’s, it’s, it is kind of the low hanging fruit at this point.

Josh Raulerson (25:01):

So, I mean, apart from the policy work that needs to be done, where else do you see opportunities to make progress? Who are you trying to reach, I guess? Because it isn’t all going to be government and, and business and, and large land managers, right? There’s a role for just people, homeowners or residents, and communities.

Mary Rooney (25:17):

Yes. We’re, we’re trying to create a network of people that maybe monthly check in with our group, but they’re, they, maybe they’re an existing watershed group or an existing Trout Unlimited group. Then they could actually just take that word, maybe using some of our basic materials and do a presentation to their own group, do a presentation to their local school district. You know, here we have like a council of churches, you know, there’s, I’ve done a presentation in front of one of the local colleges. So there’s a lot of different ways to get the word out. It’s going to be thousands and thousands of conversations in Pennsylvania because without a regulatory backstop, it’s going to be more of a people coming to the realization that the way we’ve been doing it isn’t the best way going forward. We need to make a change, which is thousands of conversations.

Josh Raulerson (26:08):

So if people would like to get involved more directly in what you are doing through the statewide working group, or through their local community watershed organization, what would you recommend? How should people get involved in this issue?

Mary Rooney (26:19):

We really do need people to come forward and be willing to talk about this issue. Jennifer’s created slide decks, but convincing people that there’s not somebody more qualified than them who should be doing this work is really a tough lift. Everybody’s like, oh, there’s got to be somebody more qualified than me to do it. And I’m like,

Jennifer Latzgo (26:36):

They kind of want us to do them all.

Mary Rooney (26:38):

Oh, yeah. So Jennifer, we are, a big joke is, you know, can’t be the Jennifer and Mary show, you know, I mean, we do have a great network. We have different people working on different things, but in terms of actually giving a presentation outward facing, it’s, it’s a tough push. It’s amazing. Hmm. Anybody who’s interested in volunteering, we, I will find a role for them. There are things to do locally or statewide. We have a email address, [email protected] and I can, you know, send you in a link. We have a temporary website thelittlelehigh.org webpage. If you look in there, we have a road salt advocacy section under LittleLehigh.org. We’re working on getting a webpage set up, but with a group of volunteers. It’s just one hurdle at a time.

Josh Raulerson (27:27):

It’s quite impressive what you’ve already done just on the strength of volunteers and passionate community members involved. So, wish you all the luck and success in the world. Jennifer and Mary, thank you so much for your time and for your work on this issue.

Mary Rooney (27:41):

Great, Josh. Thank you.

Jennifer Latzgo (27:42):

Yeah, thanks so much, Josh.

Josh Raulerson (27:50):

Find out more about the PA Road Salt Action Working Group and the little Lehigh Watershed stewards in the show notes for this episode, which you’ll find as always at pecpa.org. That’s the PEC website, where you can read up on all of our work to clean up and protect watersheds, make Pennsylvania a national leader in clean energy, develop and promote equitable trails and outdoor recreation opportunities, and much more all across the Commonwealth. On the website, you can also make a financial contribution to our work by clicking the ‘donate’ button at the top of the page, for which we’re very grateful. Find all of our past podcast episodes on the website too. You can listen right there in your web browser or subscribe to the feed in your preferred podcast app. Connect with PEC on social media via Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, BlueSky, and if you must, the platform formerly known as Twitter. That’s all for this episode. Join us for the next one coming your way at the end of September. Until then, for the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, I’m Josh Raulerson and thanks for listening.