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Help Monitor Salt Pollution in the Fox-Wolf River Basin This Winter! Winter brings snow, ice, and slippery sidewalks. Sodium chloride (salt), widely used on roads, parking lots, and sidewalks to keep us safe, can also harm our streams and wildlife when overused. Fox-Wolf is partnering with the Izaak Walton League to gather more data [...]

The post Join Fox-Wolf and Help Monitor for Chlorides(Salt) appeared first on Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance.

Original Article

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

https://fwwa.org/2025/10/23/join-fox-wolf-and-help-monitor-for-chloridessalt-3/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=join-fox-wolf-and-help-monitor-for-chloridessalt-3

Jessica Schultz

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In: Bay of Green Bay, chloride, community, Fox-Wolf Basin, Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, iwl, local, Lower Fox River, monitor, monitoring, NEWSC, opportunity, Outreach and Education, public, salt, salt watch, stormwater, streams, testing, Upper Fox River, Urban, Urban Stormwater, volunteer, volunteer opportunity, volunteers, water, Water quality, Winnebago Waterways, Wolf River

Help Protect Our Waters: Fox-Wolf’s Chloride Monitoring Program Did you know that just one teaspoon of salt can permanently pollute five gallons of freshwater? Unlike other pollutants, chloride from road salt doesn’t break down—it stays in our waterways, impacting aquatic life and even our drinking water. That’s why the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance is continuing [...]

The post Protecting Our Waters: Fox-Wolf’s Chloride Monitoring Program appeared first on Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance.

Original Article

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

https://fwwa.org/2025/01/31/chloride-monitoring/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chloride-monitoring

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

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In: 2022, 2023, Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, NEWSC, Outreach and Education, renew our waters, road salt, salt, seasonal, stormwater, sweep the salt, Urban Stormwater, Water quality, watershed, winter

In Wisconsin, winter means snow, ice, and inevitably, salt. De-icing salt is a common sight on sidewalks, parking lots, and driveways, helping to prevent slips and falls during the coldest months. However, this winter staple comes with an environmental cost: our local rivers, lakes, and streams are suffering from the overuse of salt. Why [...]

The post The Hidden Cost of Winter Salt: Protecting Wisconsin’s Waterways appeared first on Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance.

Original Article

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

https://fwwa.org/2024/12/19/the-skinny-on-salt-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-skinny-on-salt-2

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

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In: announcement, Bay of Green Bay, chloride, community, Fox-Wolf Basin, Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, iwl, Keepers of the Fox, local, Lower Fox River, monitor, monitoring, NEWSC, opportunity, Outreach and Education, public, salt, salt watch, stormwater, streams, testing, Upper Fox River, Urban, Urban Stormwater, volunteer, volunteer opportunity, volunteers, water, Water quality, Winnebago Waterways, Wolf River

Join the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, partners, and volunteers this winter to monitor for chlorides in streams throughout the Fox-Wolf River Basin!

Road salt (sodium chloride) is everywhere during winter months. It keeps us safe on roads and sidewalks, but it can also pose a threat to fish, wildlife, habitats, and more. Overall it impacts both the environment as well as human health.

Fish and bugs that live in freshwater streams can’t survive in extra salty water. And many of us (more than 118 million Americans) depend on local streams for drinking water. Water treatment plants are not equipped to filter out the extra salt, so it can end up in your tap water and even corrode your pipes.

Please join us at one of our training November 14th at Noon or 6 p.m. at the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance. Click the button to fill out our sign-up form for the training event. A free Salt Watch kit will be provided to those who attend. Monitoring is easy and a great way to help your community!

You can use your kit any time you can safely approach a waterway. But it’s especially important to test salt levels around the time of events that cause those levels to change. Those times are:

  • Before a winter storm, to find out the “normal” level of salt in your stream
  • After salt has been applied to roads
  • After the first warm day or rainstorm following a snow or freeze
  • After the next rain event

We could use more volunteers throughout the basin. Monitoring efforts are best done on smaller waterbodies, streams, rivers, and more. Please reach out to Alyssa Reinke, Alyssa@fwwa.org with more questions, comments, or concerns.

FREE Salt Watch kit available from at the training thanks to the Izaak Walton League!

The training will cover monitoring process. However, for more information, check out this video explaining the monitoring process from the Izaak Walton League:

The post Join Fox-Wolf and Help Monitor for Chlorides(Salt) appeared first on Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance.

Original Article

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

https://fwwa.org/2024/10/28/join-fox-wolf-and-help-monitor-for-chloridessalt/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=join-fox-wolf-and-help-monitor-for-chloridessalt

Alyssa Reinke

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In: road salt, salt, Waste, water

Measurements from a 2021 study show that Lake Michigan’s salt content has risen up to fifteen times its natural level since the 1800s, but the effects of these high levels are only now being understood.

The post Volunteers find high road salt levels in Michigan waterways first appeared on Great Lakes Echo.

Original Article

Great Lakes Echo

Great Lakes Echo

http://greatlakesecho.org/2022/12/28/volunteers-find-high-road-salt-levels-in-michigan-waterways/

Guest Contributor

On:
In: groundwater, salt, Water quality

Jan. 9, 2020

By Jennifer A. Smith

Too much salt is never a good thing—whether on your dinner plate or on sidewalks, driveways and roads during a long Wisconsin winter.

Students walk across a slushy UW-Madison campus. When dissolved, salt will go wherever the water goes. (Image: still from video by Bonnie Willison)

When that salt dissolves on paved surfaces, it goes anywhere the water goes, making its way from storm drains into lakes and other waterbodies. That salt runoff increases the concentration of salt in our waters, affecting not only surface water but also groundwater (the source of drinking water for most Wisconsinites).

Thanks to a new video (two, actually), Wisconsinites can brush up on their salt smarts. The videos were backed by a group of partners that included the University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute, UW-Madison, UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Wisconsin Salt Wise and the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District.

A five-minute video is aimed at general audiences, offering tips on how to apply de-icing products most effectively, depending on the air temperature, pavement temperature and type of product. The amount of salt needed to be effective may be less than you think! For example, just one coffee mug full of salt can treat a 20-foot driveway or 10 sidewalk squares.

A longer, ten-minute version of the video was designed for UW-Madison maintenance staff, who work tirelessly throughout the winter to keep the campus a safe place.

As the video notes, the Wisconsin Salt Wise website has a product application calculator that can help take the guesswork out of this task.

Abigail Ernst, who completed her master’s degree in water resources management at UW-Madison in December 2019, worked on the videos’ content and appears onscreen along with fellow water resources student Tristyn Forget. The videos were part of Ernst’s practicum for her degree. As she noted, this project grew out of stakeholder needs. While UW-Madison custodial staff strive to be mindful of salt use, they also knew it was an area for improvement and ongoing staff training.

Said Ernst, “One of the most rewarding parts of producing this video was the wide variety of people I got to collaborate with. I enjoyed working closely with the custodial department, specifically Kris Ackerbauer, Steve Heitz, Brad Marta and John Brixy. They are such a welcoming and accommodating group. I was so happy we could develop a training video that was primarily driven by their wants and needs.”

Abigail Ernst demonstrates proper salting procedure in the video. (Image: still from video by Bonnie Willison)

While translations of the longer video are still in progress, eventually it will be captioned in Tibetan, Hmong, Spanish and Nepali—which, along with English, are the most common languages spoken by UW maintenance staff.

Bonnie Willison, video producer for the Water Resources Institute and Wisconsin Sea Grant, worked with Ernst and other collaborators to bring the content to life in a concise and compelling way.

Both videos bring science and practical tips together to address what Hilary Dugan, a UW-Madison assistant professor of integrative biology interviewed in the videos, stresses is a solvable problem.

By brushing up on our winter knowledge, we can all do our part to promote public safety (after all, no one wants to wipe out on the sidewalk!) while protecting our freshwater resources.

Original Article

News Release – WRI

News Release – WRI

https://www.wri.wisc.edu/news/new-videos-can-help-you-brush-up-on-your-salt-smarts/

Jennifer Smith