The City of Milwaukee alone went through 35,182 tons of salt last winter. | Pixabay/Jerzy Górecki
The City of Milwaukee alone went through 35,182 tons of salt last winter. | Pixabay/Jerzy Górecki
All the snow that fell in Wisconsin last weekend prompted residents to scatter an excess amount of salt across driveways, roads and sidewalks which has ended up in lakes, streams and groundwater.
TMJ4 News repots that the City of Milwaukee alone went through 35,182 tons of salt last winter. That salt adds up and ends up in the water as chloride.
"Our lakes and our streams and even our ground water, which is drinking water for a lot of Wisconsinites, is getting salty," Allison Madison from Wisconsin Salt Wise said, according to TMJ4 News.
This year's chloride levels in the water is almost six times higher than what's considered "acutely toxic," which can have all kinds of negative impacts on animal and plant life.
"When we have those warmer days, those snow melt days, we can get surges of salt – sodium chloride – into the water," Madison said, according to TMJ4 News. "It's either moving into the groundwater and then into streams, or going from sidewalks and streets into storm sewers directly into our surface water."
This high salt level also harms and kills creatures that eat algae in lakes and streams leading to big algae blooms come summer.
Madison recommends that residents use less salt to melt snow and ice and that excess salt should be swept up.
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