St. Regis Mohawk Tribe leads effort to curb road salt pollution

New technology includes outfitting snow removal trucks with cameras and sensors to track salt use and optimize operations

By Zachary Matson

When researchers at Paul Smith’s College raised warnings about high salt levels in wells across the Adirondack Park, Les Benedict couldn’t help but think about what that meant for the waters flowing through the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation.

The St. Regis and Raquette rivers both terminate and flow into the St. Lawrence River on tribal territory, and a long history of industrial pollution has impacted the Indian nation. A problem in Fort Jackson or St. Regis Falls or Santa Clara is likely to make its way to the reservation, Benedict thought.

“We are downstream of everything,” said Benedict, assistant director of the tribe’s environmental division. “We are affected by everything that flows down the river.”

The growing discourse around salt pollution and efforts to reduce it in the Adirondacks spurred Benedict to study the issue. In 2022, the tribe received a $302,000 pollution prevention grant from the Environmental Protection Agency focused on salt reduction, one of the first such grants funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

This winter, tribal snow removal crews are using those funds to outfit trucks with cameras, temperature sensors and tracking equipment. A recently installed camera in the parking lot of the tribe’s new community services building records air and road temperatures and captures images every few minutes of snow conditions in the lot.

The upgrades unleashed a stream of new data. The drivers who clear many of the reservation’s parking lots track salt use, refine operations and even retrace the exact movements of a plow through a parking lot.

“It’s a lot of data, a lot of details,” said Joe Francis, the tribe’s director of facilities management, who oversees snow removal at around 50 buildings. “We can see in real time as things change.”
The new equipment also enables more control of how much salt is falling from the back of trucks. Drivers can set a salt application rate that automatically adjusts to vehicle speed. When the vehicle stops, so does the salt.

“It takes some of the stress of the operator out of the equation and lets the computer do it,” said Rob Vopleus, a consultant with WIT Advisers working with the tribe.

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Similar equipment is being used in Warren County, Peru, Edinburg, Lake George and other Adirondack communities. The improved technology, which Vopleus said takes a couple of years to get used to, enables more precise optimization of salt use.

The data allows snow removal crews to determine how much salt they actually need to maintain safe parking lots in different snow conditions. It also serves as a backup to respond to complaints about parking lot conditions, examine accidents or communicate with the public about efforts to limit salt use while maintaining safe lots and walkways.

“This is an opportunity to show the rest of the community how well they do the job,” Francis said.

Vopleus said the more road departments work to limit their salt use, the more they find room to go even further.

“Even when people reach a high level of sustainability, there is still more they can do,” he said.

As part of the grant, Benedict led a study that concluded the tribe’s waterways and soils are directly impacted by salt-polluted runoff from parking lots and roadways. State Route 37, which is maintained by the state Department of Transportation, slices through the reservation and crosses the St. Regis and Raquette rivers.

“The challenge for the tribe and highway authorities is to ensure the wise use of road salt to reduce these impacts through careful and data-driven applications,” according to the report.

Of over 100 acres of parking lots on the reservation, nearly 40% are in close proximity to wetlands. The tribe’s environmental specialists for years have monitored water quality on the St. Regis, Raquette, Grasse and St. Lawrence rivers. Each winter chloride levels rise as the winter storms pile up.

“You always had a detectable spike,” said Tony David, director of the tribe’s environmental division.

Management of snow removal in the reservation is divided. While the facilities division is upgrading its equipment through the EPA grant, a different tribal division clears the reservation’s non-state roads. Francis said other division leaders are showing interest in what his division is doing. The tribe also organized a salt reduction training at the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino in September, inviting private contractors to learn about best practices and strategies.

The grant will fund replacement of an old dilapidated salt storage shed with a new one built in an area further from wetlands. They plan to explore the use of brine on parking lots and sidewalks, which minimizes salt used but presents challenges in frigid conditions.

Even after the grant runs out, the tribe’s environmental officials hope the experience will help press the case for more investment in the future.

“Under the old paradigm, you could easily mistake [salt] consumption with productivity,” David said.

With new technology and a focus on minimizing salt use, they can start to invert that assumption. Perhaps productivity can be achieved with less consumption, less waste and fewer environmental harms, David said.

Before the technology upgrades, the facilities crews didn’t know how much salt they put down on any given pass. Now they can start to dial in the amount they need.

“All we could say was we need more salt,” Francis said. “With the systems we are now using, it’s more consistently applied. The goal is to use the right amount: not under use or overuse.”

Top photo: The St. Regis River flows under state Route 37 in Hogansburg, as it nears its confluence with the St. Lawrence River. Photo by Tom French.