Awareness Builds for Road Salt Alternatives

Friends of the Chicago River's decades-long effort to reduce the use of road salt and build awareness around best practices to lessen its impact is paying off. Across the region, municipal governments are actively educating contractors, signing contracts with the venders who follow best practices, and making homeowners more aware that road salt is bad for infrastructure, for plants, for water quality, and for aquatic life.

As we have written before in Friends’ Hold the Salt campaign, road salt even in tiny amounts can pollute water forever. The negative impacts on wildlife are myriad. Much like your dog, who does not want to walk on salt, our fish do not want to swim in it either. Salt is destructive and it needs to be used judiciously. 

Check out a recent Chicago Sun-Times editorial about salt alternative and let us know if you want to talk about salt.