Dear Michelle,
You are pretty dead on. And I’m not just agreeing because you’re making my argument for me. 😊 Indeed, any public policy choice *should* take into account impacts on things like hypertension and heart disease! Absolutely. What I am super curious about, however, is the fact that we have been salting roads for decades upon decades, and we have not yet seen dramatic increases in sodium levels in drinking water across the board. Certainly, there are isolated spots, due perhaps to salt leaching away from storage areas due to improper storage, but I haven’t seen anything that demonstrates the causation about which you raise as a possibility. We know, to a certainty, that salting roads does reduce vehicle accidents (as well as slip and fall injuries), and we can arrive at reasonably accurate estimates of the economic impact of those (and keep in mind the personal impact of losing family or loved ones in accidents too). As for other public policy changes, such as requiring all vehicles to use snow tires, that’s an immense burden as well. (BTW, I put snow tires on all of my vehicles, and encourage everyone else to so do as well.) I am sure you’d agree that, given this, the burden is on those who would advocate a material reduction in salt use to make the case, by providing studies and evidence that answer the questions raised. Bottom line: does using more salt cause more damage to public health and wildlife than offset by more lives saved from death and injury, and the economic cost of vehicle and pedestrian accidents? We have solid data on the latter, and I would love to see the former. Vty, --Dennis From: Michelle Barnes <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2022 4:00 PM To: Dennis Liu <[email protected]> Cc: Sara Mattes <[email protected]>; Lincoln Talk <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LincolnTalk] Too much - or too little - salt on the road Dear Dennis, Regarding your suggested cost/benefit analysis of salt use. What of the indirect and direct costs of sodium and chloride to human and environmental health, including clean water and healthy wetlands (as well as the impact on climate resiliency of healthy wetlands), as Joan Kimball mentioned previously? Today, or in the future, or both? It seems to me a pretty tricky public safety issue to balance, and there are intergenerational equity concerns, at least in principle. It isn’t just about the catastrophic loss of life today as there are potentially sustained human health impacts such as hypertension and heart disease that lead to impaired quality of life today and potentially more death in the future, not to mention the potential environmental health impacts including, eventually, the potential for impaired drinking water or at least the costs of making it more drinkable somehow. Some of these may be off in the future, or they may already be here and we just don’t know it, but they are likely legitimate concerns to at least consider. If we want to speak only the language of economics and not entertain moral or ethical considerations, could we be sued for those impacts as well, if not today then in the future? Might we be called upon to clean it up at some point? There is a cost for that, too. To ignore it is to put that potential cost off onto future generations. There is at least some probability of these things happening that I think should be factored into the economic cost benefit analysis being suggested below. (Some have argued these additional impacts with more certitude than I have — I am still on the learning curve here.) Or do we really just focus on the narrow public safety concern below, the here and now of ice, salt and traffic accidents and their impacts on today’s human life, liberty and lawsuits directly related to this problem and leave these other (potential) problems for future generations to pay for? Arguably inequitable, but certainly a tried and true pattern of human behavior upon which great wealth has been accumulated at the expense of future generations. Doing such an analysis would take a lot of time for any one of us, or even a group of us. In the meanwhile, maybe we can figure out how to allay the immediate safety concerns around the intersection of icy roads and driving without using more salt than is absolutely required. It isn’t clear that that is what has happened of late, as we’ve seen both the brine administered before the storm and extensive amounts of rock salt afterwards even at the end of small cul-de-sacs off of small roads where very few people are living and no one would be driving quickly. Many of us have not seen this amount of rock salt being applied since the brine began being applied. I literally end up with salt on my clothes at the end of the day, which has never happened before. Was this change in application — the re-emergence of hefty amounts of rock salt — due to more accidents? I don’t know. It would be good to know. Or is it an equipment malfunction as some have suggested? How does this high-salt policy compare with a policy of low salt and winter tires? Or other alternative means for keeping the roads safe? When we think about the costs and benefits of different alternatives, I hope we consider both the direct and indirect costs and benefits to both human and environmental health, today and for future generations and not the more restricted perspective promulgated below. These should be considered as we think of creative ways to solve these problems, as some solutions may be more expensive for us for the problems we think we are facing right now, but they may be both cheaper and more worthwhile from a variety of perspectives in the long run. Best, Michelle Barnes South Great Road On Jan 16, 2022, at 2:56 PM, Dennis Liu <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: As always, it’s good to look at the data. Assuming that data is available. To look at just LINCOLN, the first question is – when was “peak” salt use? Some sources say that salt use in the Northeast in general peaked in the 70s and 80s, and has since reduced thanks to better weather forecasting, better spreading techniques, the use of pre-treatment (which Lincoln) uses, and differing patterns of snow PLOWING. So one would have to use some controls to get an apples-to-apples measurement. More problematically, we may be confounded by the fact that Lincoln alone is a TINY data set. Consider the hypothetical – let’s say a bus crashes on ice and injures or kills 40 people. That would be a massive spike in a tiny data set. To do this accurately, one would have to look not just at Lincoln, but probably at Massachusetts, or, better yet, New England, with similar weather patterns and salting procedures. --Dennis From: Sara Mattes <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2022 2:45 PM To: Dennis Liu <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Cc: Lincoln Talk <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [LincolnTalk] Too much - or too little - salt on the road OK-using this approach, we would need to look at how many loves have been lost, how many injuries have been sustained, much property damage has accrued, and how many law suits filed against the Town when there was not this much salt put down. This should all be public information, available in Town Offices and in PubliC Safety logs. Before we raise alarm bells, let’s consult data. Then , there is a case to be made…or not. In the meantime, there are State mandated regardng the quality of our drinking water, and also storm water and its content. That we know. ------ Sara Mattes On Jan 16, 2022, at 2:34 PM, Dennis Liu <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Since this seems to be a growing conversation, a couple of points as food for thought. As with everything else involving politics and public works, we have to ask ourselves when considering taking action – “what are the TRADEOFFS for taking a proposed action?” Or “Every benefit has a cost; what is it in this case?” It’s not only the impact on the town budget (for the salt, and for the DPW crew’s time). It’s also about SAFETY. What’s the cost of avoiding an accident? Every year, 1,300 people are killed and 116,800 people are injured due to vehicle accidents on snow, slushy or icy pavement. What’s the cost of a life lost, or injury suffered? What about the cost of damaging or destroying a vehicle – and whatever the vehicle hits? Pedestrians struck in crosswalks or on sidewalks? Damaged telephone poles, buildings, signs, parked cars? And let’s not forget the massive associated costs – lawsuits. Why do businesses seemingly always “oversalt” their parking lots, roads and paths? Because it’s a really, really common and easy-to-win lawsuit. The cost of putting down ice melt is a tiny, tiny cost of paying for a lawsuit, even with insurance. Indeed, some insurance policies require plowing and salting. So, from the Town’s perspective – the “cost” for salting the roads is a combination of the actual expense for the salt, the cost for DPW time (and amortized expense of running salters), and, arguably, the externality cost of having some degree of “excess” salt entering into water. The “benefit” of salting, even salting to “excess”, is the avoidance of lawsuits, and avoiding more accidents, causing harm to life, limb and property. Avoiding excessive salting is a good thing! But if the Town is unable to lay down some perceived “perfect” quantity of salt, given the constantly changing weather conditions, surely it’d be better to oversalt by some degree, given the inherent risks? I urge everyone concerned about this issue to study NOT ONLY the impact of road salt on water and wildlife, but also take into account the impact of a life lost – perhaps a friend or loved one – as well as the economic impact from these accidents. HTH, --Dennis -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]. Search the archives at <http://lincoln.2330058.n4.nabble.com/> http://lincoln.2330058.n4.nabble.com/. Browse the archives at <https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/> https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. Change your subscription settings at <https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln> https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln. -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . Search the archives at http://lincoln.2330058.n4.nabble.com/. Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. Change your subscription settings at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln.
-- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to [email protected]. Search the archives at http://lincoln.2330058.n4.nabble.com/. Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. Change your subscription settings at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln.
