With so much talk recently of the environmental impact of road salt in Greater Sudbury – in particular to the new parking lot at the Kingsway Entertainment District – staff outlined Monday the city's policies for the operations committee.
Addressing the operations committee, city manager Randy Halverson said a salt management plan was implemented in 2016 aimed at minimizing the amount of salt used each year, without compromising the safety of the roads.
Only major roads received salt – about 25 per cent of all roads in the city – with the rest treated with winter sand, he said, which contains about five per cent salt. All parking lots are treated with winter sand, as well.
One of the bigger challenges is ensuring that salt storage depots don't leach into the soil so, for example, a new salt dome was built at the city's Frobisher depot.
“Moving forward, we need to continued with this proactive approach,” Halverson said.
Ward 10 Coun. Fern Cormier said he has been getting a lot of emails from residents asking questions about the threat to drinking water from Ramsey Lake, where the majority of residents get their drinking water.
“I get a lot of questions about the safety of the lake,” Cormier said. “Is that something we need to be concerned with?”
“Absolutely we should be concerned,” said infrastructure GM Tony Cecutti. “We are all concerned. We need to respect the environment."
But Cecutti said sodium levels in Ramsey Lake vary depending on what time of year you test and where the testing is done. Recently, the trends have shown salt concentrations declining slightly.
“It is encouraging,” he said. “We're happy to see that level drop a bit.”
A big part of the strategy to protect Ramsey will come from the watershed studies currently being done, he said. They will show where the greatest threats to the lake are, helping them come up with strategies to better protect the lake.
Ward 4 Coun. Evelyn Dutrisac wondered why the city doesn't always use winter sand instead of salt.
“What's the difference in terms of efficiency?” Dutrisac asked.
Halverson said minimum road safety standards drives use of salt on major roads, which are quickly de-iced to prevent accidents.
“Making the roads safe, that's what it's really all about,” he said.
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