Welcome everyone to Midday Magazine for this December 14th, 2023.
Have your host, James J. Meiloff here, and we are at 330.
We're in part two.
We are speaking with our good friend, Anna James,
National Resources Educator with UW-Madison Extension,
Wood County.
Anna, it is always good to have you with us.
Thanks for being here.
You're very welcome, Josh.
I earlier this morning was talking with Madison Raffter
from the Humane Society.
So I think that's where that came from.
Appreciate the time for me.
And always I always learned something.
When I hang out with you, Anna, I appreciate that.
I know our audience does.
And the topic we're getting into today
is one that I think kind of gets lost in the shuffle
sometimes this time of year.
We're going to focus on winter salt awareness.
Yeah, and I mean, it's really relevant.
I mean, we've got a lot of snow and ice,
especially coming, you know.
So I think that there's a lot of misconceptions about salt use.
And so I would like to address that.
And I don't think it's a subject that's talked about a lot.
And I think people could really educate themselves
on the use of salt.
So if we just get right into it, I mean, we rely on salt
tremendously, especially during winters.
We salt our roadways.
We salt our sidewalks.
Sometimes we rely on salt in our homes.
I mean, and that could be for water softeners.
We're not going to focus on those today,
mainly just road salt.
So in Wisconsin and much of the United States,
chloride from salt is infiltrating
our lakes, streams, and groundwater.
And so we might think that when we salt our roadways,
or salt our driveways, that there's no adverse effect to that.
But there can actually be a pretty heavy price to pay.
So it actually only takes one teaspoon of salt
to pollute five gallons of water to a level that's toxic
to freshwater fish and freshwater ecosystems.
If you don't mind, I'd like to repeat that
for the people in the back.
I just want to make sure that they hear that.
That's one teaspoon of salt to pollute five gallons of water.
That's an incredible step.
Yeah, it is.
And I mean, when you're walking on the sidewalks during winter,
you see that salt, or when you're on the roadways,
you see the salt that's piled up on the side of the roads.
And sometimes they'll come through and sweep that salt up even.
Well, where does that salt go?
You know, what happens to it?
We don't really think about that aspect of it.
So we know where the salt comes from, right?
We commonly salt our driveways, our roads, parking lots, et cetera.
So when summer and spring hit chloride levels
in our natural bodies of water, like our lakes, rivers and streams,
actually spike because of the salt that we use.
So why do we want to care about our usage of salt?
There's a couple of different reasons, right?
We already mentioned salty water can have impacts on freshwater
ecosystems.
It ends up in our lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands.
And the chloride from salt actually
degrades those ecosystems.
We have a lot of species here that are not tolerant as freshwater
species to those higher levels of chloride in the system.
Yep.
We've heard a lot of talk of PFAs and things like this recently.
And I think we've been able to gain a lot of attention
and awareness to that.
Hopefully we can do it with this subject, too.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, Wisconsin has been using salt
because it's cheap since the 1950s, right?
Nobody wants to drive on icy roads.
It's understandable why we use it.
It's just if you think about it from the 1950s till now,
that's a lot of time to build up chloride levels.
Yeah.
That's a lot of salt that goes down.
It's decades of that, huh?
Yep.
So naturally occurring concentrations of chloride
can be found in Wisconsin, rivers, streams, lakes, et cetera.
But those are usually less than 1 milligram.
And that's kind of a standard throughout most of Wisconsin's
waterways, our surface water and groundwater.
And actually our soils, too, have been
absorbed, being virtually all of the salt that spread
in the state for more than six decades.
And that's where we see those chloride amounts increase.
And what salt gets into the waterways,
it can be very, very expensive and very difficult to remove.
I mean, some of the infrastructure to remove salt
from our waterways is extremely expensive.
And we're seeing that again with the PFAS situation,
that maybe if we can counter this,
and we're already late to the game on this one,
but if we can start doing some work now
and all of us kind of making our own,
taking care of our own backyard, if you will,
or front yard as it is in your front driveway
and stuff, the less of us using this,
the less of us it goes in,
and maybe the less that our future generations
have to worry about.
Right, and with salt,
salt is pretty different than PFAS.
PFAS is a forever chemical.
There's no silver bullet to cure that.
That we know of currently.
Salt, we do have simple ways.
And we'll kind of touch on those later on
of how we can reduce our impacts much more.
One of the things that I think,
I know that I just speak for myself.
I know that I'm tired of,
and I know I've heard from others too,
is this idea of, well,
we've always done it that way,
and that that's the reason,
that that's like a good enough reason
to keep doing something the way we've always done it,
just because we've always done it that way.
That doesn't hold weight anymore,
and we're seeing a lot more of,
not only the younger generations and stuff,
doing something about that,
but more and more people caring about this,
but for those that may not,
how do we get them to care?
How do we get them to be in on this subject with us?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's education,
so that's why I'm here is one of the,
I was never taught.
I don't think my parents were ever taught,
especially about this topic,
that what we lay down to make sure we don't slip and fall
has some adverse consequences.
So I think, you know,
while there are some attitudes of,
this is how we've done it,
and this is how we will just continue to do it,
there's gonna be people like that everywhere, right?
But the more that we can educate ourselves,
the more we can help educate others,
which I think is a wonderful way
to just become aware and help others
to become aware of things like this,
where we can really make a difference.
Well said.
But yeah, so I mean,
there's some other reasons
why we should care about our salt use,
and I don't know how many people know this,
but excess salt can actually weaken our infrastructure.
So salt can weaken our concrete bricks, stones,
and the makeup of our homes,
garages, bridges, et cetera.
So one ton of rock salt can cause between $800
and $3,300 of damage,
which I mean, that's,
to us personally,
that could be a pretty big hit,
and nationwide it can actually cause
over $5 billion annually in damage
to our roads and our bridges.
Billion with the bee people.
I'm not talking in that person.
You're right.
That's fair dollars.
Exactly, and I'm so glad
that you're bringing it to this point too,
because in this area,
and dealing with a lot of people in this area,
one of the things that I have found
is that most people care about things,
but you've got to find the right thing to catch them.
And almost everybody cares about their tax dollars.
Almost everybody cares about that,
even if you don't care about the environment,
you're going to probably care about that
and maybe we can get people to help with this,
even if it is a roundabout way of doing it.
I almost, I don't really care anymore.
I just want people to be doing this.
But that is a strong reason.
It may also be the reason why,
that gets somebody who is on the fence
about this subject of not using as much salt
to maybe stop using as much.
We already have proof of this.
You didn't need Anna to tell you this though.
If you've been in the Midwest with a vehicle,
you understand that the toll it can take
this salt can do on your vehicle.
Why would you think it'd be any different
on infrastructure?
But I never even thought of that, Anna,
until you brought it up now
and in the topics and everything.
There's a really good one to touch on.
Yeah, yeah, and not only our infrastructure too,
but our lovely pets that can be at home.
I know that they make salt that you can buy
for like, salting your driveways
that are pet friendly, et cetera,
but those are still have chloride
and which can have adverse effects.
So the salt that you can see on the roadways
or on the driveways, et cetera,
that can actually really irritate your pet's skin,
especially their paws.
I'm thinking of dogs mainly or paws
when they're out walking.
And problems can also arise if they eat that salt.
They can actually get sick from it.
So, and then we have animals,
but we also have plants as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of our living things are affected by.
In fact, every living thing is affected
by this in some way or another.
Right, right.
If I can go to, just go back to the pets for a second
because my dad is one of like most Midwest dads out there,
gets the salt, but you know,
back in November and he's waiting to use it.
And he, he's very, he uses a lot of it
and everything and for years,
I've been kind of on him about this
and I couldn't get him to listen,
couldn't get him to listen.
My dad's a pretty open-minded guy,
but this one is one of those topics.
He was just pretty steadfast on.
The way that we got him to stop using less salt
is how much he loves that my fur brother, Sammy.
And, and when he found out that it can affect their paws,
it like, I saw it flush over his face.
It really affected him.
I do think that this is going to hit on a lot of people,
but to your point,
when we get this counter salt, if you will,
that's safe for pets,
that doesn't mean it's safe for our planet.
Right, right, yeah.
And then there's still chemicals
within that pace, excuse me,
that pet-safe salt that we use.
And then getting back to the plants
and some of our other animals,
right, we think about pets,
but there's also wildlife
that can be impacted by this salt use as well.
Salt can actually stress plants and animals
that have adapted in our freshwater ecosystems.
We mentioned that a little bit earlier.
So just a couple of examples for wildlife.
Spotted salamanders and wood frogs
are two amphibians that are rarely found in ponds.
Once chloride levels have peaked
to exceed like 200 milligrams per liter of chloride.
So these concentrations can actually make
the wood frogs susceptible to parasites.
And once they get parasites,
it's kind of game over.
Yeah, and there was actually a study done
by Bill Hintz at University of Toledo
that showed that rainbow trout
in habitat areas of high salt concentrations
can experience a decreased growth rate of growth.
And like it was a tremendous decrease in rate of growth.
And so we think of central Wisconsin
and you might think, oh, well,
only northern Wisconsin has those trout streams.
Actually, no, we're in central Wisconsin
really rich with trout streams.
And so you think about
when we salt our roadways, when we salt the bridge,
that's the easiest access point
to getting into some of our streams and our waterways.
So yeah, we have to think about those animals
that we don't necessarily see on a regular basis
or wouldn't be top of mind, right?
When we're talking about,
we've talked about how this affects infrastructure
or talked about how it affects tax dollars.
Now we're talking about how it affects the state's commerce.
This state is rich in environment
and hunting and fishing.
It's one of the biggest things
that people come to this state for.
If not, the number one thing people come to this state for.
Now we're seeing this affecting that.
And that, again, is going to affect your dollars,
is going to affect the dollars that Wisconsin can raise.
And another important reason of why we need to stop doing this,
just period stop.
Like this is one of those ones
we need to slow down on.
This is one we need to stop.
We need to stop it yesterday.
But, and we're speaking with Anna James,
Natural Resources Educator with UW Extension.
And Anna, I think with a topic like this,
we're giving people a lot of information
maybe they didn't know before,
but it's also a big topic.
And as we touched on before,
well, we've always done it this way.
How can I help?
What can I do with something this big?
But there are things you can do.
Oh, yeah, there are a ton of things
that you can do to help.
So there's a program called Wisconsin Salt Wise
and it's a really wonderful program
throughout the state.
We'll kind of, I'll give you some resources
on how to access that website.
But they talk about being smart
with your winter salting.
So when we all want to get all of the snow
off of our sidewalks or our driveways, right?
And then the first thing we do after we shovel
is probably lay down salt.
I mean, I do it, right?
We all do it.
But so if you shovel,
we're trying to make sure that one of the ways
that you can really be smart with your winter salting
is to shovel and to shovel as well as you can.
I'm clearing your walkways and other areas
before the snow turns to ice is a more effective way
to reduce the amount of salt that you would actually use.
And then you can actually scatter the salt.
So my family, we always had a bag of salt
by the door with some kind of cup inside of it.
And it would just be filling up a bucket
and tossing that cup, not caring how much we really put out.
I've done it before I was educated.
I did it for sure, I'll be the first to admit that.
So if you use salt, scatter it so that there's actually
spaces in between the grains of salt,
believe it or not, a coffee mug of salt
is enough to treat an entire 20-foot driveway
or 10 of the sidewalk squares.
That's a coffee mug.
We're not talking like the big coffee mug, right?
That's a regular size, your average coffee mug.
And so it can be really hard.
You just kind of want to throw all that salt out there
and get it done as fast as what you can.
But just try to be mindful and mindful of your use
and not only that, but mindful of your consumption of it too.
Dressing warm, be patient when you're out there doing it.
It won't take as long.
And I think you're actually going to save money on salt
by doing it that way.
Yep.
And if you're not the person that's removing the snow
or placing salt, say you hire somebody,
you can actually select a certified contractor.
So through Wisconsin salt wise program,
contractors can become salt wise certified.
So if you hire someone for snow removal,
just ask if they're certified
through the winter salt certification program.
I did look at the map and it doesn't seem like in Wisconsin
that we are in central Wisconsin,
here in our area, Wisconsin Rapids Stevens Point
that anybody was certified, at least private contractors.
So if you're a private contractor,
it could be something that people would seek out.
There's an opening.
There is an opening.
There is an open market right here.
Yeah.
Speaking of our roads,
I think that one of the more common things
we see on the roads is sand being used for something like this.
Yep.
And there's also programs to where through Wisconsin salt wise
where cities, you're in municipalities,
can become certified through the salt wise program.
Municipalities can actually hire an educator
to come and to teach them about how to calibrate
their equipment, how to determine when to use what,
sometimes we want to use brine,
sometimes we want to use salt,
sometimes we want to use sand.
So they'll actually educate those municipalities
and whoever's driving the snow plows and salt trucks
to use it wisely.
Which is only going to probably turn into your city saving tax dollars.
It is actually, yeah.
Jefferson County has actually become a leader
in a salt wise initiative throughout the state.
Their efforts helped the county cut salt use
by nearly nine million pounds,
which saved the tax, or the taxpayers,
$550,000 of money.
Wow.
That's pretty nice.
Yeah, it is.
And that gets back to our taxpayer dollars, right?
So I would just encourage you,
if you're a maintenance professional or a private contractor,
become aware of some of these initiatives
that can not only save you money,
but it has a really good outlook for you
as a private contractor and to the citizens
that you serve within the community.
Sweeping up excess salt is another great thing to do.
Yeah, so there's a couple of communities
that actually have like initiatives
that sweep up excess salt.
So you can sweep up leftover salt
and that reduces damage to your concrete
and protects your local waterways.
Some communities, like I had said,
have the sweep the salt campaign
and others have actually started a salt recycling program.
Some of the salt, if it's not dissolved,
you can use it again.
So if you look at your salt use and you say,
oh, maybe I could get in like,
is it still in the grain size?
You know, is it not melted?
You can sweep that up and use it.
One thing to mention too is the pavement
when you're throwing salt out,
when pavement reaches a temperature
that drops below 15 degrees,
salt doesn't actually work.
So then you might want to switch to something like sand.
Yeah, which, that's an incredible thing to hear
to hear for people out there
if they didn't know that already.
Because nobody out there listening
doesn't want to save a couple bucks.
You're not going to be using as much salt
if you're not using it in those times.
We have plenty of days this winter
that are going to be those kind of days
where we're hitting those temperatures.
I think that you're still going to have plenty of people
that are throwing salt out.
If hopefully you hear this and you understand,
that's not going to help you any.
So I think that's an important note too.
That's really interesting.
Yeah.
And if you're just really ramped about this idea
and you want to get involved,
there's actually citizen science programs
that you can get involved in.
The Isaac Walton League has a salt watch program
and you can sign up for that
and you can become a chloride monitor.
So you can pick a stream or a waterway in your area.
Isaac Walton League will send you a packet
and you just tell them where you want to sample
and then you just go down and sample.
I think it's a couple of times a year,
really not that hard.
Then you can kind of monitor that and advocate
for your local waterways, which is really cool.
Anna, for the audience to look behind the curtain
a little bit, Anna sent us these notes ahead of time
so I was able to look them over
and was doing my own little bit of homework
and research on this subject.
And there's a couple of things that really surprised me
I've already touched on today that you have brought up.
But one of the overall things that I took from this
was a subject that we don't get a chance to talk
about that much and many of us may not think of very often.
But thankfully we've got a lot of community members
who have been thinking about this.
Whether it is this Isaac Walton's league salt watch program
or it is the winter salt certification program.
Like there's already initiatives.
There's already things in line
and it had been going on for a while about this subject
where some cities, some areas might be getting late to this.
This has been going on for a while.
So again, to speak to the importance of this topic,
whether you think it's important or not,
there's a lot of your local,
your fellow Wisconsinites that do.
And we've already seen some jump on this.
So as Anna was telling you that there are things you can do,
there are ways you can find out more.
And is there anything as far as like gray area
with this subject that we haven't really gotten
a chance to dive into?
I'm really glad that the sand part came up
because I think that that's something
that a lot of people are really,
and originally when we were talking about this,
one of the first things they're going to think of,
we see it on our streets and many times in town,
you'll see usually an orange box or something like that
with a bunch of sand in it.
I remember the first time I saw one of those
and I don't understand what it was for.
I didn't understand it.
No, I was a city kid, you know what?
There's things like that that I think counter this,
the use, the need of salt.
Yeah, and like I said, educate yourself.
If you're really interested in how you can change
your usage of salt, other methods, educate yourself.
I'm here speaking, I mean, a majority of the information
I got is because I took a class through salt wise,
I was able to sit in on a webinar and learn for myself.
So I was able to use these resources
to help educate other people, right?
And if you're curious, the Wisconsin Salt wise website
has a ton of great information.
They've gotten educator like I had said before.
If you have questions as municipality,
you can reach out to the educator.
If you have questions about, you know,
your own private home or a contractor,
you can reach out to them as well.
They are actually a partnership
between a couple of really great organizations.
I know Wisconsin DNR is one of them.
So a couple of really well-known organizations
that have put backing and put funding towards this,
which is pretty cool.
Got a couple of minutes left, Anna.
I want to go over some of the talking points
that we had today, like earlier when we said
it only takes one teaspoon of salt to pollute
five gallons of water to a level
that is toxic for freshwater ecosystems.
I think that is an important stat for people to hear.
The idea of how much money this can save taxpayers.
Yeah, over 500,000 that it possibly could be saved
from something like the Jefferson County.
We saw Jefferson County save and everything.
That is important.
The way it affects our animals and our pets,
I think, is really hits a lot of people close to the heart
when it comes to that.
The idea that they may not even know
they're hurting their animals or their pets.
Being informed of that.
Were there any things, as you said,
you got kind of educated to this late too,
or not late, but...
It was late, I'll be honest, it was pretty late.
Yeah, and me too.
You know, I don't think you're alone on that one.
I know them as well, and many people out there with that.
But when you were first hearing this information,
was there anything that really blew you away?
There was like, whoa, I didn't really know that.
Yeah, I mean, just the fact that it was so impactful.
I think was the eye opener for me.
Some of the stats that I shared today
were the eye opening moment for me.
And I thought about it.
Sitting there reflecting on it still now,
I have to choose to be mindful about it as well.
Walking on sidewalks, going into my house,
going into grocery store,
you don't think about all that excess salt that you see.
It's just something we're so accustomed to
as being residents of Wisconsin.
Salt is just something we're accustomed to, right?
But I think the thing that just opened my mind was how easy
it was to overlook that impact.
So, yeah, I would just encourage people to try to be mindful
of even those small details, right?
And to choose to be mindful as you continue forward.
And some of these things are so,
it may seem mundane to us, right?
But it's not mundane to the animal's ecosystems.
That's affecting her.
Or your tax dollars or all these other factors
that this hits on so many layers and so many levels.
I'm sure that there are people that are going to follow questions
one of them more and hopefully research this subject.
If Anna people want that kind of information,
where can they get it or how can they get a hold of you?
Yep. If you want more information about the Wisconsin
Salt Wise program, you can go to
www.saltwis.com
or you can reach out to me at anna.m.james
at www.wisc.edu.
Always appreciate the time, Anna.
Always learn when I talk to you.
You know how much I love that.
Looking forward to talking again real soon.
Happy holidays to you and yours. Happy New Year's.
You as well.
Yep, you as well.
We're midday magazine for you tomorrow right here at 975 FM 1320 AM WFHR.
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