Legislation that attempts to reduce the amount of road salt flowing into Vermont’s waterways appears to be headed for a veto.
A bill that won approval in the Legislature last week and will soon arrive on the desk of Republican Gov. Phil Scott would curb road salt usage by teaching municipal road crews and commercial applicators how to use less of it.
Washington County Sen. Anne Watson, the Democratic chair of the Senate committee on natural resources, said levels of chloride — the pollutant caused by road salt — are on the rise in waterways across the state.
“In the absence of any other guidance, more salt means more safety, and so there’s this pressure to oversalt,” Watson said this week. “And it just means that people end up using way more salt than is actually needed to keep people safe.”
Scott said Thursday, however, that he’s worried the measure could expose municipalities and private companies to heightened legal risks.
“As someone who plowed many, many commercial areas throughout central Vermont over the years, and been sued a few times for slip and falls, you want to have that protection,” said Scott, who used to own a contracting business.
Watson said the bill provides that protection. It would create a voluntary certification program in which the Agency of Natural Resources and Agency of Transportation would instruct municipal and commercial applicators on how to use less road salt. Towns and companies that get the certification would have their liability capped at $500,000 per individual claim for a slip-and-fall injury, or other incidents related to icy pavement.
Josh Hanford, with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, said municipalities have an environmental and economic incentive to use less salt.
“They actually do support the underlying intent of this bill — to save money and to help protect the environment,” he said.
But, like the governor, Hanford said the legislation creates untenable legal risks for towns and cities that choose to participate in the new training program.
Hanford said the litany of requirements needed to attain the liability caps would be too onerous for many towns. Municipalities, for instance, would have to keep records of all road salt applications, and the temperature and weather conditions when it was applied.
“If there was one misstep, they don’t have any protection,” Hanford said.
Based on the vote count in the House, the Legislature would not be able to override the governor’s veto.
Salinity levels in Lake Champlain, and in rivers such as the Winooski, the Lamoille and the Missisquoi, have in some areas nearly doubled over the last 25 years. State officials say fish, frogs and other aquatic animals can suffer harm from chloride levels of 50 milligrams per liter. Dozens of locations across the state, mostly in Chittenden County, have seen chloride levels hit four to nine times that amount.
Jared Carpenter, with the Lake Champlain Committee, said road salt also threatens the state’s drinking water supply. Carpenter said there’s no data on total salt usage in Vermont, but, nationally, according to one study, road salt usage has more than doubled since 1975.
“It starts corroding pipes, and that starts leading to heavy metals being leached into our drinking water supplies, including lead,” Carpenter said. “So this is a public health problem, not just an environmental issue. … And we need to get a handle on the issue.”
