Somewhere on a road in northeast Minnesota a snowplow named Clearopathtra makes life easier for impatient drivers.
“Name-a-Snowplow'' competitions in states across the country remind residents about the importance of winter road crews and the risks of overusing salt. After New York and Pennsylvania, states in the Upper Midwest are among the country’s largest users of road salt each winter.
For more than two decades, aquatic chloride standards in those states have pushed regulators, policymakers and elected officials to track and optimize salt use, spread best practices, bolster public understanding and expand water monitoring.
The Adirondack Road Salt Reduction Task Force, in its report last year, drew on lessons from other states, as well as within New York, to outline ways for New York to improve state, local and private salt use practices.
The lessons of other states point out a variety of legal and policy strategies:
Regulate
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1988 recommended chloride standards of 230 mg/l to protect aquatic ecosystems. Even as researchers continued to find
