Abstracts

Road salt is impacting surface and groundwater drinking water sources, vegetative and
aquatic biota, soil matrices and infrastructure life cycles. The Ministry of the Environment
and Climate Change (MOECC) has prescribed application, handling and storage
of road salt as a significant threat to municipal drinking water under the Clean Water Act,
2006 (CWA). In response to the CWA, Source Protection Committees have conducted
technical studies that determined that the application, handling, and storage of road salt is
deteriorating sources of municipal drinking water.
Halton Region completed a review of all municipal drinking water threat activities and
estimated their respective potential contributions to salt loading within their Cedarvale
Wellhead Protection Area. This study concluded that 85% of total salt loading within
their Wellhead Protection Area is attributed to the application of road salt on private parking
lots. Further research concluded that there are no Minimum Maintenance Standards
contractor’s responsible for winter maintenance on private lots, most winter maintenance
contracts are based on amount of salt applied and there are no parking lot design standards
that optimize road salt application within Ontario.
Halton Region is collaborating with their lower tier municipalities to develop a Salt Management
Strategy (SMS) in response to both Regional Council and the MOECC’s direction
to protect municipal drinking water sources from the application, handling, and
storage of road salt within vulnerable areas throughout Halton Region. While maintaining
public safety, the SMS provides salt optimization parking lot design guidelines to municipal
staff responsible for approval new large parking lots within vulnerable areas, and
provides awareness through education and outreach materials the impacts of road salt to
municipal drinking water sources.
244 - Quantifying the Impact of Road Salt Management Practices
on Water Quality in Public Supply Wells within the Region of
Waterloo
D. L. Rudolph 1 , J. Melchin 2 , M. Stone 1 & G. Sarwar 1
1
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
2
Matrix Solutions Inc, Breslau, Ontario, Canada
Long-term road salt application has increased sodium and chloride concentrations in
drinking water wells in many cold climate communities. The Regional Municipality of
Waterloo (RMOW) implemented various road salt best management practices (BMPs)
designed to reduce the impact of the winter deicers on public supply wells. During the
winter 2004-2005, the RMOW set a 25% reduction target in the amount of NaCl applied
to city streets in wellhead protection areas and a 10% reduction target for all other city
streets within the vicinity of the Greenbrook Well Field where elevated levels of sodium
and chloride had been observed. Prior to the implementation of these reductions, in 2001-
2002, pre-BMP estimates of road salt loading to the water table were made by quantifying
the mass loading along various representative road types by tracking the salt mass flux
through the vadose zone. Salt transport was evaluated through the analysis of replicate core
samples collected along curbs at selected field sites over several annual cycles. Post-BMP
IAH-CNC 2015 WATERLOO CONFERENCE
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