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Worth your salt
 Snow and ice have finally arrived in Minnesota, which means slippery sidewalks and driveways. The Water Resources Department wants to learn about how you use salt with a short survey. Take the survey.
When snow and ice melts, most of the salt and sand goes with it. It washes into lakes and streams. Once in the water, there is no way to remove it. On sidewalks and roads, salt helps us stay safe, but in the water, salt a pollutant. The salt that does not wash away soaks into the ground and damages plant life.
One teaspoon of road salt can permanently pollute five gallons of water.
There are many ways to reduce salt use while maintaining high safety standards. Follow these simple rules to protect our clean water.
Shovel
The more snow and ice you remove manually, the less salt you will have to use and the more effective it can be. Keep up with the storm, it’s easier to go out twice and do a little each time than to go out and do it all at once. Break up ice with an ice scraper and decide if application of a de-icer or sand is necessary to maintain traction.
More salt does not mean more melting
Use less than 4 pounds of salt per 1,000 square feet (an average parking space is about 150 square feet). One pound of salt is approximately a heaping 12-ounce coffee mug.
15 degrees is too cold for salt
Most salts stop working around 15 degrees. Use sand instead. Some de-icers are effective below this temperature, follow the “practical melting point” not the “eutectic temperature.”
Sweep up extra
If salt is visible on dry pavement it is no longer doing any work and will be washed away. Use this salt somewhere else or throw it in the trash.
Salt is used due to its ability to decrease the freezing point of water. Using calcium chloride is less harmful to the environment than sodium chloride (rock salt), but is more expensive. Whatever product you chose, make sure you know the temperature it stops working. Many labels refer to the eutectic temperature, but it is important to use the practical melting temperature. If it is too cold for salt to work, use sand instead.
Learn more
Watch this video, Improved Winter Maintenance: Good Choices for Clean Water to learn a few easy things about tools, techniques and products that you can use to keep your driveways and sidewalks safe and protect our waters. No salt, or very little salt, is needed if you've done a good job of snow removal.
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This page was last updated on: 02/06/2012
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