If there's one thing that should bring people together, it's the planet we all share. So perhaps it's not surprising to learn about the diverse coalition - governmental agencies, private contractors, non-profits and associations - working to address the harmful impacts of chlorides on water bodies.

Partnerships and idea-sharing

Chloride reduction efforts have been ongoing for more than two decades - and as word has spread and more has been learned about the issue of chloride contamination, the community of people concerned about the issue has grown. And ideas are being shared and borrowed across borders and between industry members. For example, Minnesota was an early leader in salt reduction and its voluntary salt applicator training program, and more states are pursuing similar initiatives.

Ted Diers, assistant director of the water division within New Hampshire's Department of Environmental Services, says a major highway expansion project 20 years ago initially led to chloride concerns when pre-construction research revealed very high levels of chlorides in surrounding water. "We already had impaired water bodies and now we\'92re talking about doubling the size of the highway," he recalls. "The project was needed, so we said we have to find a way to reduce the amount of salt being used."

The state began to rely on brine for highway treatments, created a program to help municipalities buy better equipment to control salt applications, and created its own voluntary training program.

As New Hampshire crafted plans to combat chloride contamination, Diers connected with Phill Sexton, founder and CEO of WIT Advisers, based in New York. Sexton says that the corrosive effects of rock salt were well known even decades earlier. "But back then," he notes, "very few understood the urgent negative forever impacts that chloride salts contribute to freshwater resources, including drinking water health."

Sexton says it was after reading an alarming research paper in 2008 that he "started to tune into the issue of road salt pollution impacts contributed by the private snow and ice industry - my industry. It showed conclusively how much of the issue was originating from private parking lots and roads, much more so than highways."

Realizing their shared interest in, and alarm about, the issue, Diers and Sexton began collaborating as part of a public/private effort to find solutions. It's just one of many such collaborations that have taken place around chloride contamination.

A growing community

Diers says that in the early days, there weren't many people involved in the effort. "Now we see a lot more advocates for it, as seen by the popularity of the Salt Symposium (an annual conference co-presented by SIMA and the NH Department of Environmental Services), which sells out. This shows a desire among people to interact and learn from each other on this topic." He adds that "the partnership with SIMA has been critical for us. Given how small of a state we are, having partnerships is critical on this issue."

And Diers says that the larger the community of partners grows, the greater the likelihood of success in coming up with new strategies: "I've spoken to so many states and countries about these programs and what's very clear is that someone is going to figure out better approaches. There is a strong period of innovation going on, with technology developing really rapidly and more adoption of this technology. The more brains we can put toward this issue...the more we focus on it, the better."

Strength in numbers

Allison Madison, program manager with Wisconsin Salt Wise, a coalition of organizations from across the state working together to reduce salt pollution, says it's critical to grow the community of people who want to be part of the solution. "I try to get out in front of people as much as possible," she explains. That happens through speaking at events, media appearances, webinars and more.

Wisconsin created an annual Winter Salt Awareness Week to bring home the message. States from Maine to Colorado are also participating in and promoting the event. (Learn more at wintersaltweek.org). Madison says that every little bit of knowledge sharing - between states, between counties, between companies - helps grow the community. For example, Wisconsin Salt Wise hopes to get money into the governor's budget to replicate Ohio's "H2Ohio" grant program to support the purchase of storage and equipment to reduce salt use by public and municipal road crews.

For Sexton, the community that has formed around this issue has both surprised and encouraged him. "The unanticipated positive benefit of salt pollution is the community of stakeholders we've managed to either develop or connect with in the past decade," he says, citing the broad collaboration of stakeholders who are passionate about reducing salt/chloride loading."It includes everyone from non-government organizations, municipalities, and commercial property owners/managers to environmental agencies, state DOTs, watershed management districts, and contractors."

Challenges to overcome

Acknowledging the initial resistance some feel to reducing salt applications, "Change is hard and can be scary," Madison says.

Diers agrees that one of the biggest challenges in reducing chloride contamination is simply changing mindsets. For so long the prevailing idea has been that more salt equals safer conditions.

"That's the next nut to crack," he says. "How do we create different [types of] contracts to incentivize salt reduction? How do we get communities to learn each other's great work? How do we get to the place that the property manager isn't calling you because their boots don't crunch on salt when they walk? That societal expectation is slow to change, but the bigger we grow the network, the more normal it gets."

And that comes down to changing culture, Sexton says. "It's taken me and our team nearly a decade to identify and learn how to work with the fact that the amount and frequency of road salt applications is a deeply embedded human behavior issue."

While that fact can create a challenge, he notes that it also presents an opportunity: Once a company or organization learns a new way (WIT Advisers has created SWiM standards to guide effective and responsible applications), it embeds a new mindset in them.

"The single greatest success is when the 'buy in' happens, and we aren't needed to sustain and continuously improve reduction efforts," he says.

Sexton advises focusing on "purpose" (rather than "cost savings" or the general message of "change") when promoting the concept of reduced salt applications. "People, companies and organizations will buy into a purpose," he's found.

Charting progress

Even as the community of advocates builds, it's not always easy to see that progress is being made.

Sexton works with organizations to get baseline measurements of their salt use, and from there to accurately measure their salt outputs, with a goal of identifying areas for continuous improvement. This sort of data is quantifiable.

At the same time, Diers notes that quantifying results by looking at decreased chloride content in water bodies can be more difficult. First, chlorides remain in the environment for a long period of time, so it might take 5 or 10 years to see numbers start to drop, even after instituting changes. And, second, each winter is different and, increasingly in many places, warming weather has temperatures hovering right around the freezing mark ("the hairy edge," he says), which makes it more challenging to reduce salt usage. "Constant freeze-thaw cycles are problematic," he notes.

What both point to as a sign of progress is the momentum the overall effort has gained. "After over 10 years of slugging away at this issue, having met a great deal of resistance to change early on, our team is extremely gratified to experience a broader shift in the mindsets of dozens and getting closer to hundreds of organizations that are now asking for help rather than be told they need to change," says Sexton.

"The success some firms have had in reducing salt use is remarkable," Diers says. "There is a lot of increased awareness in public and in the industry." He points out that some contractors are actually promoting salt reduction as part of their business model. And he credits liability relief laws with allowing people, "especially property owners," to feel more comfortable about reducing salt applications.

Madison says the goal now is to continue educating people and growing a community committed to the cause. "We focus on training applicators on best practices, and sharing case studies [about salt reduction success stories]. These are perhaps the most powerful tools, because then people can see themselves in someone else," Madison explains.

Another part of the mission is to educate the general public, she adds: "If they don't understand the negative impacts of salt, then their default request is more salt." So the goal is to reach everyone from residents to property managers.

No one company, municipality, DOT agency or non-profit can solve the salt dilemma by itself, she concludes. "But we can all do our part - that is the only way forward."

"Every now and then I get an email from someone saying they saw me do a presentation a year or two earlier and it planted a seed, and now they are advocating for change, or have purchased a new piece of equipment to reduce their salt use. It doesn't always happen immediately, but if we're not talking about it, we can't make progress. And the more smart brains we have focused on this issue, the better."

Patrick White has covered the landscape and snow and ice management industries for over 25 years. Contact him at pwhite@meadowridgemedia.com.