Road salt on the city’s bridges raised the river’s chlorine levels, making the water more corrosive. This has continued into the present and may have been one reason poorly-treated Flint River water was so damaging to metal pipes.
I shared this because my city doesn’t use rock salt during winter, and its pretty inconvenient as a driver. So I was surprised to learn why.
It’s disingenuous to say it’s the PRIMARY contributor, but it is a factor!
The DOT around my area has started using cheese brine to pre treat the roads and it has been doing a pretty decent job.
Do you live in WI? I am from there and that sounds like the most Wisconsin sentence ever haha!
Oh ya
Youbetcha
Ope! Just gonna squeeze past ya quick.
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Cheese flavored salt water.
Same thing caused the I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse* in Minneapolis. Take cues from the Norwegians and Swedes; crushed rock for traction, spiked tires for traction and no chemical salt to fuck up your land and waterways.
Snow was here before humans and will continue long after we exterminate ourselves from the planet. Learn to live with it and stop fighting nature.
Edit: a word*
It also rusts the shit out of cars which is why 3 year old cars from the midwest resemble 30 year old cars from the west coast. I wonder if anyone has ever calculated all the lost capital caused by salting roads. I bet it’s insanely high with the infrastructure and property damage alone.
I was stunned moving to Chicago from Tulsa! Back home we only use sand, which is annoying as hell as it doesn’t go away as easily.
But damn, cars rusted out overnight. The crappy minivan I drove down to Florida had to be trashed within 2-months of arriving. Undercarriage so rotten it wasn’t sane to repair the brakes. And that was after a fuel line popped a week before!
Wondered why I didn’t see many old cars in Chicagoland.
Being in Wisconsin as well, I always wonder how the environment copes with crazy amount of salt that gets used on the roads during bad winters. We’ve had winters where they ran out of salt and started using sand.
Salting the roads is just another stupid thing we do to destroy everything around us
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/12/11/road-salt-harms-environment/
Long but great read. Thanks for sharing.
One more reason to not have cars.
Do you just bike and walk in ice all winter?
Sled dogs and x-country skis
You think it doesn’t snow in Scandinavia?
