Though winter snows come and go, road salt tends to hang around, writes Justin Udo for KYW Newsradio,
Now Delaware County is asking the public to help them figure out how leftover road salt is affecting the county’s waterways.
Road salt can cause damage to infrastructure and to stream and lake health, according to Delaware County Sustainability Officer Rebecca Yurkovich.
“It can be really detrimental to overall water health if we’re seeing both plants and animals are no longer able to thrive in their own natural environments,” she said. “Our fish, macroinvertebrates, algae, and everything like that, they are built for freshwater conditions, but now they are being introduced to salt, which is expected to be year-round, and they can’t cope with that, so they can no longer live or thrive in our freshwater environments.”
The Stroud Water Research Center, which is conducting the road salt study, is inviting residents to sign up to take water samples from their local creeks and submit them for tests.
Once the data is in, if it shows a significant impact from salt runoff, officials will next tackle how to fix it.
Find out more about the road salt research and how to sign up.
Read more about the road salt issue at KYW Newsradio.
