Lake Champlain Sea Grant Hosts Road Salt Research Symposium
On January 11, 2024, a group of 76 individuals – 43 in-person and 33 online – came together to learn about and share research that has focused on road salt in the Lake Champlain basin in recent years. Goals for the day included: 1) providing a networking opportunity for researchers who are engaged in road salt research; 2) learning key findings from across the breadth of research and monitoring efforts in the basin; and 3) identifying gaps in knowledge and opportunities for future research that relates to road salt and its impacts on the environment, economies, and communities in the basin.
Speakers shared knowledge of short- and long-term chloride trends in Lake Champlain, Lake George, and their tributaries. This included ongoing efforts to carry out total maximum daily load monitoring and modeling in Vermont and results from a monitoring effort focused on a New York State Department of Transportation road salt reduction pilot program. In addition, speakers shared research about salt storage facilities as potential point sources of chloride to groundwaters and resulting tools and resources to aid communities in understanding potential risks. Participants spent the final hour of the symposium engaged in thoughtful conversations to identify and discuss the highest priority needs for research in the basin as related to road salt.
"It was wonderful to get to gather with others researching road salt and working to reduce its pollution in the Lake Champlain Basin," shared Carolyn Koestner, Lake Champlain Sea Grant and Ausable River Association fellow who attended the conference. "I look forward to seeing what great work comes out of this gathering."
The event was recorded and is available on the Lake Champlain Sea Grant YouTube site. In addition, Lake Champlain Sea Grant staff compiled a reference list of road salt-related research papers that have been published over the past 50 years. This list and the identified research gaps are available from Kris Stepenuck, Extension Program Leader and Associate Director of Lake Champlain Sea Grant, at kstepenu [at] uvm.edu.