National Highway Runoff Water-Quality Data and Methodology Synthesis
Road Salt and Other Deicing Materials
The National Highway Runoff Water-Quality Data and Methodology Synthesis will not be evaluating studies that deal solely with road-salt or other deicing materials in detail because deicing chemical problems are defined by local weather, hydrology and geology. However, deicing-chemical contamination of public and private water supplies has become a serious and costly problem particularly in the Northeast and Northern Midwest. For example, an estimated 10 million dollars are spent annually by State and local governments to prevent and remediate road-salt contamination (Transportation Research Board, 1991). Also, deicing materials can be a substantial portion of total dissolved solids in runoff on highways where deicing operations are conducted.
Mass balance of total dissolved solids at a monitoring station along Interstate 85 in a rural area of North Carolina (Harned, 1988).
Therefore, a bibliography (ASCII text) of road salt studies collected during the literature search is provided HERE or better yet search for salt at our bibliographic search web site.
_________________________________________________ References:
Harned, D.A., 1988, Effects of Highway Runoff on Streamflow and Water Quality in the Sevenmile Creek Basin, a Rural Area in the Piedmont Province of North Carolina, July 1981 to July 1982. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 2329, 105 p.
Transportation Research Board, 1991, Committee on the comparative costs of rock salt and calcium magnesium acetate (CMA) for highway deicing in Highway Deicing, comparing salt and calcium magnesium acetate: Washington D.C., National Research Council, Special Report 235, p. 108-110.