ROAD WORK

It is snowing, the flakes descending in endless, languorous swirls. Seemingly from nowhere, the snowplows emerge—yellow lights flashing and blades grinding. It is winter in the Adirondacks. There would be something reassuring, cozy even, about the scene, except for one thing: the road salt pouring from the trucks.

For the past 40 years, ever since the 1980 Winter Olympics, salt has been the weapon of choice for keeping roads in the Adirondacks safe. Before that, sand was the main line of defense, but was itself problematic. (More on that later.) Town and state workers have dumped so much salt on roads in the last four decades that the tonnage surpasses that of the Adirondacks’ acreage: 6.9 million. To grasp just how much salt that represents, picture five 50-pound bags of salt for every foot of paved roadway across the entire park.

All that might be just an interesting bit of local trivia, except that salt has frightening health and environmental consequences for the Adirondacks.

Salt seeps into groundwater and, eventually, residents’ wells, with some homeowners no longer able to drink from their own taps. It runs off roads into streams and lakes, killing zooplankton and disrupting the food web for insects and fish. The decrease in zooplankton could yield an increase in harmful algae, which the plankton ordinarily keep in check.

In some water bodies, such as Mirror Lake in Lake