While it was a "spring is really here" moment to see crews cleaning up the sand and salt deposited on the northbound Battlefords Bridge last week, it was less cheering to see the workers simply dumping winter's leavings over the edge into the river below.
Is this done on every bridge in the province's highway system? If so, that's a whack of salt and debris being dumped directly into our waterways. While it was comforting to learn from the Ministry of Highways that it is not "generally their policy" to allow debris to go into the river, and that the crew has been "spoken to" it's too late to take back the crud that went into the North Saskatchewan last week.
A University of York report posted in October 2013 talks about the effect de-icing of roads has on the environment. The report says 75 to 90 per cent of de-icing salt ends up within 10 metres of the road, although elevated levels of sodium and chloride have been detected even hundreds of metres away from roads. Once in the soil the salt can then leech into water supplies.
The report also says high salt concentrations can increase the mobility of heavy metal pollutants, while causing loss of soil structure.
The report admits the true extent to which roadside soils, vegetation and associated water bodies have been impacted by salting is poorly understood. "Many questions about the long-term effects of road salting currently remain unanswered," the report states.
So with more questions than answers, are we still justified in being outraged by the actions of this crew?
It is safe to assume a significant amount of the salt and sand applied to bridges over the winter gets pushed into the river by passing traffic, or washed there by spring rain. As long as salting/sanding continues, that's a difficult situation to avoid.
But to not even attempt to mitigate the environmental degradation by loading up and safely disposing of salt and sand cleaned up on the bridge is just plain wrong.
