Road salt use creates environmental worries

Pennsylvania`s Department of Transportation still relies on a steady diet of salt to de-ice state roads and highways.

But in some other states, including neighboring New Jersey, products like beet juice and cheese brine are being used to keep drivers safe and roads away from salt.

The unique de-icers — beet byproducts in New Jersey and Minnesota, molasses in Maine and cheese brine in Wisconsin — supplement salt or replace it entirely. They are a way to reduce pollution and lessen salt’s corrosive impacts on roads and waterways, according to researchers and state transportation officials...

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Ken Notes: Every year we discuss this. A couple of notes, we should look for higher concentrations of salt in products we "process" anyway - cheese whey comes to mind. Also below 18 Degrees salt stops working. Finally pretreating roads works better that most solutions.We really need to address the entire issue from a runoff perspective -- the problem is that our road salt finds its way into our watersheds virtually unfiltered.