Salt Pollution

Background

For a couple of years Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition has been raising awareness about salt impacts on Lake Simcoe, and this year Freshwater Future funded us to start an Ontario salt subnetwork of groups that could work on this issue. We did that and quickly learned that Landscape Ontario was running a safety and salt campaign. Our grassroots campaign, now co-led by us and WaterWatchers is working with Landscape Ontario to support changes to improve safety and protect the natural environment. A catalyst to the work of landscape Ontario is the massive and increasing insurance liability costs. Slip and fall lawsuits have become such a problem for the Snow Management Sector; they feel without change they cannot defend themselves and many companies have closed their doors or just left snow management entirely. They say they apply too much salt to avoid lawsuits because the system is wholly contractor centric when that should not be the case.

What is being proposed is a regulatory package, along with legislative changes, that would ensure all involved have responsibilities and none can contract out of their liability. The package seeks that all sites have to eliminate hazards that have created over-salting conditions or establish a site specific protocol for hazards that cannot be eliminated which involve all who have a role in managing sites. Participants would also do mandatory training and a best practices program. All signs say that this change would translate into much less salt being applied on our roads.

That would be a great start, but our Ontario Road Salt Coalition wants to ensure that this effort results in improvements to Ontario’s water quality in areas experiencing salt pollution.  We are asking the province to take additional steps to do so. We have asked Landscape Ontario to work with us in a task force with provincial government involvement, and Landscape Ontario has agreed to do so. Learn more about their proposal here.

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What’s the problem?

Salt in our lakes and rivers is bad for the entire ecosystem. At high concentrations, salt can seriously harm or even kill aquatic animals, including fish, crustaceans, amphibians, and plants. It damages infrastructure and rusts vehicles. Anyone with a dog knows it also hurts their paws and wrecks our leather boots and shoes! 

Other adverse effects of increased chloride concentrations in freshwater include:

• Changes to the structure of the lake because salt water is denser than freshwater.
• Helping invasive saltwater species to survive in our lakes.
• With less competition from species sensitive to chloride, we will see an increase in mosquitoes.
• Exposure to high (acute) concentrations of salt is deadly to fish and amphibians but lower (chronic) concentrations affect how they reproduce, grow, and thrive.
• Reducing the abundance and biodiversity of microscopic plants and animals. This has a cascading effect on the rest of the food web.

Zooplankton (think evil Plankton from Spongebob Square pants) really get the worst of it. But real Plankton are not evil at all. Zooplankton forms an important part of the food web that feeds Lake Simcoe’s fish like lake trout and whitefish. 

Upsetting the delicate balance of nature has already affected aquatic biota in 64% of the Lake Simcoe watershed.

The Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority studied this problem in 2015 and report that by 2031, “16% of the watershed is predicted to exceed the Canadian Water Quality Guideline for long-term exposure for the protection of aquatic life from chloride (120 mg/L) on an average annual basis. Over 4.5% of the watershed is predicted to exceed the short-term exposure guideline (640 mg/L) on an average annual basis,” (p iii, Identifying Salt Vulnerable Areas in the Lake Simcoe Watershed). These are brutal predictions, and along with the impacts of climate change, would wreak havoc on the watershed’s ecosystem. 

At Lake Simcoe, at least five rivers chronically exceed the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment long-term guideline for the protection of aquatic life. If the trend continues, Lake Simcoe itself could reach the long-term exposure threshold by 2058, which is 120 mg/L.

Whose fault is it?

Only 1 – 2% of the salt problem is caused by residential application. It’s really about the extent of the road network. And highways are chloride hotspots, which is one of the reasons we oppose the Bradford Bypassand fight for density instead of sprawl.

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Seize the opportunity

We have an incredible opportunity to lead the way in Canada, right here, right now in Ontario. One of the most important decision-makers on this file is Minister Downey, Attorney General, Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte. Doug Ford and Minister of Environment Conservation and Parks, Todd McCarthy are also key decision makers on this file. Ask them to take action now with a personal email from you! If you are in their ridings tell them you’re a constituent.

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Related videos

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Documents

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Acknowledgements

This work is funded by the Helen McRae Peacock Foundation and the McLean Foundation and individual donors like you. We are so grateful!