Hold the Salt

With all the recent snow, it seems like the perfect time to discuss other options for salting the roads in the Lake George basin. Salt runoff is one of the primary pollutants reaching the lake.

Here is a product called Magic Salt, which bills itself “as less corrosive, biodegradable and environmentally friendly,” than regular salt. Here is a .pdf file of an area coated on one side with regular salt and coated on another side with magic salt. Notice how the grass is burned on the regular salt side.

Here is a product called Ice B’Gone® that is made of a molasses-like liquid that can be mixed with regular rock salt. It “contains no algae-forming phosphorus”.

These are the types of products that will bring us into the future. There are most likely many others. We’ll bring to your attention a new technology that is being studied in Maryland that can lengthen the life of an existing drain field with plain old regular air.

You never thought salt was so cool.