Nearly 40,000 metric tons of chloride, mostly from road salt, washes down the Winooski River every year — equal to the weight of about 40,000 black rhinos. That’s nearly double the amount recorded in the early ‘90s, when chloride monitoring in the lake began, according to the latest report from the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
Next year, water quality advocates will once again call on Vermont lawmakers to establish a program to cut down on the use of road salt on private and municipal land, which they say is a major driver in the increasing use of road salt.
Reducing pollution from chloride is one of several priorities for the Vermont Citizens Advisory Committee on Lake Champlain’s Future, which presented their action plan at a meeting this week in Shelburne.
“Salt’s very expensive, so there’s ways out there where you can use the minimal amount available and still achieve that safety that you need with it, but not do as much harm to aquatic resources, or to infrastructure, or the bottom of your car,” Jared Carpenter, with the nonprofit the Lake Champlain Committee, said at the meeting.
He’s been working on a policy measure for over a year to incentivize businesses with large parking lots, town road crews and residents to use less road salt, modeled off programs in New York and New Hampshire. While the Agency of Transportation has decreased their road salt use in recent years, Carpenter said commercial and municipal applicators often don’t have the same resources or training as state employees.
The citizens advisory group is also urging lawmakers to invest in continuous aquatic invasive species management; flood mitigation measures like enlarging culverts, removing dams, and restoring wetlands; and public access to the lake.
Jennifer Lawson, now the manager of the Charlotte Town Beach, remembers how easy it was to access the lake growing up in Shelburne. “There was a beach bus,” she said.
“We would get dropped off down at the beach, spend the day at the beach — they had lifeguards, swimming lessons — and then they would drive us back home.”
She’s not sure a beach bus would work today. But she thinks there should be more ways for young people to access the water that’s not expensive or a burden on caregivers.
“I hate to think of the lake as becoming elite.”
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