It is not just Wisconsin’s lakes that need protecting — rising levels of salt in water wells could affect those with sodium restrictions.
The use of rock salt is reserved for the winter months, but this utilization leads to chloride particles that remain in our waterways and water wells for indeterminate periods of time, City of Madison Water Resource Engineer Phil Gaebler said.
An understanding of salt’s effects on the surrounding environment, lakes, streams and drinking water can limit confusion and increase adherence to recommendations according to Wisconsin Salt Wise.
Wisconsin Salt Wise, a coalition focused on the reduction of salt use to limit pollution in our waterways, focuses on not only educating the public but working toward impactful legal changes, Wisconsin Salt Wise Program Manager Allison Madison said.
The City of Madison is a part of Wisconsin Salt Wise and is advocating for the most effective use of deicers, Gaebler said.
The vast majority of deicers — whether salt, sodium chloride, magnesium chloride or calcium chloride — contain chloride, which cannot efficiently be filtered out once put into the environment, Gaebler said.
“Source control is really your best option, which means do not put out unnecessary amounts,” Gaebler said. “Let’s use our salt as judiciously as possible. Let’s only use what we need to to have safe surfaces.”
The City of Madison has worked continually to find the most well-suited recommendations for road salting, while balancing environmental safety, public safety and legal liability, Gaebler said.
The current policy held by the City of Madison bases salt utilization on the type of road, general traffic and cement temperatures, Gaebler said.
Madison has a series of salt routes with a higher need for efficiency, such as the bus routes and arterial streets, or highways, according to Gaebler.
Smaller residential streets are treated with sand with a 5-10% chloride content — without the chloride, the sand would freeze and ultimately be ineffective, he said.
“When you are at that high of an excess [of rock salt], that’s when you come across a parking lot, three days after it snowed and you are just walking on rock salt, which is not making anyone safer,” Gaebler said. “It can even be a tripping hazard, and eventually that will get crushed up by car tires and blow away.”
The urgency of salt pollution in our waterways is vastly underestimated, Gaebler said.
Not only is salt in our waterways, but it is also in our drinking water, creating potentially harmful conditions for people with low-sodium diets, Madison said.
About 40% of drinking water wells in Wisconsin have surpassed the EPA recommendations for sodium, Madison said. The use of water softeners contributes to the influx of salt in waterways and water wells.
“Once it [chloride] is in our drinking water, we do not have a great way to deal with it,” Madison said. “Everyone would have to run reverse osmosis at their taps. Both road salt and water softener go downstream because the wastewater plants cannot remove that.”
In a recent effort, Wisconsin Salt Wise has been working to pass Senate Bill 52 or Assembly Bill 61 which would offer liability protection to companies that work to follow best practices in salting, Madison said.
The bill was vetoed by Gov. Evers in 2024, despite strong support from both businesses and conservation groups, according to the NIBF.
According to Gaebler, people who have done training and follow recommendations should not be pressured by fear of potential liability cases to put down extra salt.
“If you do the right things and keep the surface safe, doing something better for the world, at least you have that level of protection,” Gaebler said.
Despite the bill being modeled after a successful New Hampshire program that has been running for 10 years, trial lawyers have successfully lobbied against the bill, Madison said. These lawyers may not want to give up potential lawsuits that the bill would prevent.
“What we need is to get the trial lawyers to come to the table and talk with us and we haven’t been able to do that yet,” Madison said. “We need to have something that they could be a little less against.”
Wisconsin Salt Wise is now focusing on purchasing $5 million worth of road salt equipment, which was approved in the State of Wisconsin’s final 2025-27 budget by Gov. Evers, Madison said.
The program is molded after one in Ohio that has shown positive results and would allow for the purchase of equipment to get a better scrape, pavement temperature sensors and brining equipment, Madison said.