This bill amends the transportation law, in relation to imposing certain requirements for the distribution of road salt.
Road salt pollution poses serious threats to New York’s lakes, rivers, and groundwater. Road salt (NaCl) is the most common road de-icing agent used in New York and contributes, via snowmelt and runoff, to chloride and sodium contamination. This negatively impacts drinking quality, including by corroding plumbing that leaches dangerous levels of lead, and aquatic ecosystems, including by depleting oxygen levels and mobilizing heavy metals.
The magnitude of road salt application in New York is alarming. Statewide, the NYS Department of Transportation (DOT) applied 844,000 tons of road salt on DOT-managed roads in the 2022–2023 winter season, the highest application amount of any state transportation department reported for that season. DOT is the state’s greatest contributor of road salt pollution; studies have found that Adirondack lakes and private wells located next to state roads have far higher chloride concentrations than those lakes and private wells next to local roads.
Many waterbodies are experiencing rising sodium and chloride levels as a result of increased road salt use. The Mohawk River has seen an increase in sodium and chloride concentrations of 130% and 243%, respectively, from 1952–1998. Last year, New York City declared that chloride levels in the New Croton Reservoir had tripled since the 1980s and that continued road salt pollution might make 10% of the city’s source water unusable in a hundred years.
This legislation purports to reduce road salt pollution across the state by setting a limit on how much road salt can be spread on roads (300 pounds per lane mile on average each winter) and at parking lots and sidewalks (4.7 pounds per one thousand square feet). But these limits appear to be arbitrary, and the bill does not provide any scientific evidence that these limits are stringent enough to result in water quality improvements.
Indeed, the bill’s limits appear to be meaningless for DOT, since their current road salt application rates are already below 300 lbs/lane mile: during the 2024-25 winter season, DOT’s statewide average application rate was 172 lbs/lane mile. This bill would therefore lead to only minimal reductions or none at all by the state’s largest contributor of road salt pollution.
New York must take a rigorous, science-based approach to reducing road salt pollution and protecting clean water while keeping roadways safe for drivers. This legislation would not deliver the necessary action to make progress on this urgent issue.
