Road salt use in Ottawa still climbing

By Micki Cowan and Allison McNeely City hall initiatives to reduce salt use on Ottawa’s snowy roads seem to have melted away. Ottawa has a salt management plan which aims to reduce salt use over the long term. The 2014 transportation budget allocates new funding to support salt reduction techniques such as wetting the salt in advance so that it can be spread in liquid form. Another innovation uses GPS to track where trucks are spreading to avoid duplication. But the city’s program manager for operational research, Maxwell Miner, said the city isn’t actually using less salt than in previous years and there are no new initiatives proposed to directly reduce salt use. “City council approved a pretty rich set of quality standards. It calls for a lot of salting, meaning a lot of the road networks need to be bare or centre-bare,” Miner said. This means it is difficult to meet salt reduction goals. The city’s road salt usage varies depending on the amount of snowfall, but more than 181,0oo tonnes of salt were used on Ottawa’s roads in 2012, according to data provided by the city. That’s roughly the weight of 30,000 elephants who, if lined end to end, would reach from here to Montreal. That amount is also the highest the city has seen since 2008. A report on salt use says the city aims to clear snow down to bare pavement within four hours on high priority roads, most arterials, and most major collector roads near schools, transit or bike lanes. But clearer roads mean more salt. Coun. David Chernushenko said while he doesn’t know of any new initiatives to reduce road salt, the increased funding in the budget for ongoing salt reduction programs means the city is already more economical with its salt use. “In some cases we want to just carry on what we’re doing,” said Chernushenko. In 2011, the city agreed to do a pilot project with Earth Innovations, a company that makes an environmentally friendly salt alternative called EcoTraction. But Earth Innovations CEO Mark Watson said the pilot project never went forward. “We’re absolutely interested in doing a pilot project. We always have been,” Watson said. “To this day I still don’t understand why they cancelled the initiative.” Chernushenko said the city cancelled the project because the product is more expensive than the salt currently used in Ottawa. Environment Canada developed a risk management plan for handling road salts in 2001, after finding it is toxic and harms groundwater, soil and plants. The city voluntarily signed on to the proposal and it forms the basis of its salt management plans. This...