{"id":510643,"date":"2026-01-12T10:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T10:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/510643\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T10:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T10:44:13","slug":"salt-used-to-keep-winter-roads-safe-is-also-endangering-municipal-water-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/510643\/","title":{"rendered":"Salt used to keep winter roads safe is also endangering municipal water systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Workers clear snow during a storm on Boxing Day in Toronto, in 2025.Sammy Kogan\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

If all goes according to plan, Calgarians will be able to return to their bathrooms this week without worrying that a simple flush of the toilet could push the city\u2019s ailing water system toward another catastrophe<\/a>. <\/p>\n

For nearly two weeks, residents have faced emergency water restrictions as city crews repair the second major rupture in 18 months along a water main that supplies up to 60 per cent of the municipality\u2019s potable water. Officials anticipate easing restrictions early this week but warned that the frail Bearspaw South Feeder Main could blow again before a more permanent solution is ready. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a ticking time bomb underneath our streets,\u201d Mayor Jeromy Farkas said.<\/p>\n

The recent break coincided with the release of a report into the last major failure along the line, in June, 2024, that pointed to an array of political and bureaucratic reasons the pipe has fallen into disrepair. But it gave little consideration to sodium chloride, a chemical culprit that saturates local soils and has become both a saviour and a scourge across the country, racking up an estimated $5-billion in infrastructure damage annually.<\/p>\n

Every year, the City of Calgary covers its roads with between 40,000 and 50,000 tonnes of road salt, an unrefined version of the sodium chloride found in table salt. A previous city-commissioned investigation found that elevated chloride levels in the soil from road salt contributed to the water pipe\u2019s 2024 blowout. <\/p>\n

City of Calgary ignored two decades of warning signs about water system, report finds<\/a><\/p>\n

The failing portion of the Bearspaw South Feeder Main was made of a combination of concrete and steel wrapped with high-tensile wires. <\/b>It was supposed to last 100 years, but 50 years into its service life investigators found that chloride had caused hydrogen embrittlement and stress corrosion in the wires. <\/p>\n

The same chemical used to keep the city\u2019s winter roads safe was endangering its water system. <\/p>\n

That tension extends far beyond Calgary. Every year, Canada scatters around seven million tonnes of sodium chloride on public roads. That\u2019s enough to fill a line of dump trucks stretching from Vancouver to Toronto, and it likely makes us the biggest per-kilometre salt users in the world, according to a 2020 Norwegian study.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all safer for it. One widely cited Marquette University study determined that spreading salt on icy roads can reduce collisions by around 90 per cent. <\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, salt is important for safety,\u201d said Kamal Hossain, associate professor in transportation engineering at Carleton University. \u201cBut it goes into our water system, destroys our vegetation, kills aquatic life, corrodes our vehicles and infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

2024: Sixty years of road salt has destroyed Ottawa\u2019s Alexandra Bridge, officials say<\/a><\/p>\n

Those salt-induced casualties include the steel and concrete underpinning Toronto\u2019s Gardiner Expressway (currently undergoing a nearly $2-billion renewal); Montreal\u2019s old Champlain Bridge (replaced after just 57 years owing in part to heavy salt corrosion); and a mall parking lot in Elliot Lake, Ont., that collapsed in 2012, killing two people. Canada\u2019s Ecofiscal Commission, a non-governmental group of economists, estimates that these hidden costs add up to $5-billion a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have aging infrastructure and we\u2019re accelerating that aging through oversalting,\u201d said Julie Wright, national director of Our Living Waters, a non-profit group, and a city councillor in Waterloo, Ont., where chloride originating from road salt has infiltrated the groundwater residents rely on to drink.<\/p>\n

The region\u2019s water treatment systems do not desalinate, a costly and energy-intensive process.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment considers chloride in water safe for aquatic life as long as it doesn\u2019t exceed 120 milligrams a litre. But waterways around big Canadian cities routinely measure more than 10 times that threshold. <\/p>\n

Zooplankton are especially sensitive. Because they eat algae and, in turn, are eaten by small fish, they are a vital link in aquatic food chains, converting algal growth into animal energy. <\/p>\n

The Decibel: The sorry state of Canada\u2019s water pipes<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIs that where we want to go \u2013 lakes that are full of algae and lacking in diversity? I don\u2019t think so,\u201d said Shelley Arnott, a Queen\u2019s University biology professor specializing in aquatic ecology.<\/p>\n

Her research has found that organisms in many water bodies start to show adverse effects at chloride levels of between 5 and 40 mg\/L, suggesting Canada\u2019s guidelines could be too forgiving.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe simply have to do something other than apply so much salt,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But do what? Road authorities are experimenting with an array of food-based alternatives \u2013 coffee grounds, cheese brine, pickle juice and beet juice, which Dr. Arnott has found can be more toxic than salt. <\/p>\n

Many municipalities are reducing salt by using brines and adopting technology that adjusts salt application based on vehicle speed and road conditions.<\/p>\n

Yet for all the reduction efforts, salt continues to accumulate in the environment. Chloride levels in Lake Simcoe, for instance, about 60 kilometres north of Toronto, have increased steadily by about 0.7 mg\/L a year since the 1970s despite reduction programs throughout the region. <\/p>\n

Opinion: Calgary\u2019s water-use restrictions are a symptom of a much larger problem in Canada<\/a><\/p>\n

Along portions of the Bearspaw line that failed in Calgary in 2024, investigators found chloride levels had spiked by as much as 15 times in just a decade. <\/p>\n

One underexamined source is private property. In Ontario, private contractors tend to use far more salt than necessary out of liability fears, said Joe Salemi, executive director of Landscape Ontario, an industry group representing snow-removal companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust being named in a lawsuit usually means spending $20,000 or $30,000 in a lawsuit,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Municipalities face the same liability concerns, said Wyatt Weatherson, a PhD student in Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s Urban Water program focusing on road salt use.<\/p>\n

He says governments could focus on public education, encouraging people to use winter boots and winter tires to reduce the need for salt. But over all, he says the outlook for eliminating road salt is bleak \u2013 at least until climate change wipes out winter in much of the country by 2100 or so.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a wicked problem,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no clear solution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Workers clear snow during a storm on Boxing Day in Toronto, in 2025.Sammy…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":510644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2148,2138,671,104,2132,692,2147,2131,2143,2144,2140,2133,2130,79,407,746,2142,2137,2159,2134,2135,454,2139,1165,728,2149,108,2154,2155,50,2157,2152,2156,2150,2153,2136,85,2146,80,2145,2151,1458,158,1164,2141,1154,107,2158],"class_list":{"0":"post-510643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-news","38":"tag-northwest-territories","39":"tag-nova-scotia","40":"tag-nunavut","41":"tag-ontario","42":"tag-pei","43":"tag-photos","44":"tag-political-news","45":"tag-political-opinion","46":"tag-politics","47":"tag-politics-news","48":"tag-quebec","49":"tag-sports-news","50":"tag-technology","51":"tag-travel","52":"tag-trudeau","53":"tag-us-news","54":"tag-world-news","55":"tag-yukon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}