State offers new road salt reduction funding 

DEC moves to advance task force recommendations to protect Adirondack waters

By Zachary Matson

State clean water funding will soon be directed to Adirondack roads.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is making money available to communities to outfit highway crews with equipment to help minimize the spreading of salt in winter for motorist safety.

Grants under the state’s water quality improvement program as well as a pollutant reduction planning program can be used to purchase specialized plow blades, brine equipment, GPS and other tracking devices critical to efforts to rein in road salt use at the local level. The funding is available according to grant criteria released this month.

The new funding opportunities represent a step toward implementing recommendations in the Adirondack Road Salt Reduction Task Force report published last year and aim to encourage local governments across the state to adopt practices to reduce their salt use.

Those practices include spreading brine in certain situations, monitoring salt use rates and tracking road and weather conditions with remote sensors. 

“In order to actually get those things happening with communities, the task force felt like funding had to be available to make best management practices possible,” said AJ Smith, deputy director of DEC’s water division and an agency representative on the task force.

The agency in recent years has funded construction of new salt storage sheds, an important step to minimizing runoff from salt piles into nearby water sources, but the latest round of funding will now support equipment and other purchases to reduce the amount of salt deemed necessary in the first place. DEC expects to award up to $15 million in grants statewide between the two grant categories, Smith said. 

New grants under a separate program will enable communities to develop winter road management plans outlining how to minimize salt use. Those grants could fund consultants or other ways communities would plot a strategy to reduce salt use over time. Communities that have those plans in place will score higher on applications for equipment funding.

“There’s an element of training and planning that needs to happen to really understand how best to implement these practices,” Smith said. 

Some scoring criteria could benefit Adirondack communities in particular. The handful of places identified in the task force report as locations to test salt reduction strategies — along roads near Keeseville, Lake Clear, Mirror Lake and Lake George — will get a scoring boost. So will communities with roads in close proximity to trout waters, and those proposing multiple salt reduction practices or implementing projects along more roadway miles.

Efforts underway

AdkAction, a Keeseville-based nonprofit working with Adirondack communities to minimize salt use, was identified in the grant criteria alongside the Department of Transportation as a source of required best management training. Sawyer Bailey, the nonprofit’s executive director, said the equipment funding will go a long way. 

“One of the biggest barriers we see for towns and county highway departments is that while salt reduction can lead to cost control, it can take a few years to get there,” Bailey said. “An infusion of capital to purchase equipment makes a big difference in the near term.”

Communities are at different places in adopting reduction strategies, but Bailey said more road departments are working on the problem than people realize. She said AdkAction plans to support communities applying for the grants and to work toward collaborative brining programs and other ways to share resources.  

“You would be surprised with how much towns are already doing,” Bailey said. 

Smith said the agency has discussed ways to open the funding to multi-municipality projects, such as centralized brine production and storage, but this year’s program stuck to the agency’s traditional contracting process. Nonprofits can apply for certain water quality grants, such as land acquisition and wildlife habitat restoration, but not salt reduction this year. 

Municipalities and Native American nations can apply for the grants through the consolidated funding application due July 31. Applicants must match 25% of the grant with local funding.

New water standards

DEC this month also took initial steps toward establishing a new chloride standard to protect aquatic life, another task force recommendation. 

The agency is soliciting public input for its triennial review of water quality standards, which undergird permit requirements, impaired waters determinations and other state water programs. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1988 recommended chloride standards of 230 mg/l to protect aquatic ecosystems. Even as researchers documented harm to aquatic life at far lower concentrations, including in the Adirondack Park, New York never adopted the standard. Many other states did.

The Adirondack task force report recommended the state at a minimum adopt the federal chloride standard, but that alone would do little to control salt pollution under the moderate-by-comparison concentrations of Adirondack lakes.

So, the task force suggested setting chloride targets of 40 mg/l and 10 mg/l for the park’s sensitive ecosystems.

The recent solicitation by DEC will give researchers and other members of the public an opportunity to suggest whether and at what level the state should adopt a chloride standard for aquatic life, or any new or revised water standard, providing data to back up their proposals. 

“You have to know what you are trying to limit. The standards give you that ability,” Smith said. “They are foundational in so many of our programs.”

Photo at top: A low salt sign on state Route 9N near Lake George. Photo by Zachary Matson