Salt Treatment for Snow on the Trails?

[Steve O]

Overuse of salt is rampant everywhere I look. Every winter there are a few piles right near my house after the snow is gone and the street is dry. Instead of going to the store to buy salt for my walkway and sidewalk, I go out with a shovel and broom and fill up an old kitty litter box with it. Free for me. It was going to get washed down the street anyway, but now it gets used again to help keep my walkway clear.

[dasgeh]

@Steve O 104171 wrote:

Yes, I didn’t mean to imply that.
At BAC meetings I have heard this excuse used, however, for not treating. Not actually close the trail, but effectively close it by leaving it impassable for most users.
I have always been an advocate of getting the snow off immediately, then no treatment is needed at all–or only spot treatments in tough spots. The rest just dries out. Faster, cheaper, better for our waterways. Win-win.

I’ll also add that one of the reasons I advocate for consistent trail maintenance (including snow plowing) is to make the trails reliable transportation corridors. Getting people, especially those coveted “interested but concerned” potential cyclists, to start thinking of trails as reliable transportation corridors is a key part of getting more people to figure out how to bike, to go car-lite or even car-free. Knowing that the trails are there, reliably available for biking, will lead to more biking overall. So even if those new cyclists don’t bike on days when the trails need clearing, clearing the trails leads more people to bike generally, which both has positive environmental effects and makes cycling safer.

[baiskeli]

@Steve O 104171 wrote:

Yes, I didn’t mean to imply that.
At BAC meetings I have heard this excuse used, however, for not treating. Not actually close the trail, but effectively close it by leaving it impassable for most users.
I have always been an advocate of getting the snow off immediately, then no treatment is needed at all–or only spot treatments in tough spots. The rest just dries out. Faster, cheaper, better for our waterways. Win-win.

Yeah, that would be ideal – like sending a streetsweeper up and down the trail all through the storm. But that probably wouldn’t be practical.

[mstone]

@baiskeli 104142 wrote:

Can you prove this please?

Nope. You’re the one arguing that there’s an issue. You do the homework. Look for the documents about where the drains go. (Including every little culvert coming off a parking lot.) Look into how Arlington is addressing runoff from private lots (hint: it has no power to do so). If you want to talk about the impact of TMDLs, please look into whether chlorides are a part of the 4MR TMDL plan and how that prioritizes this concern. Yes, Arlington has spent a bunch of money on making things better, but there’s a long way to go. If this is really a concern for you, there are much bigger fish to fry than MUPs. I’ll leave it to you to review the stormwater management plan and identify those fish. You’ll note when you read the plan that most of the focus for at least the next decade is other things which aren’t going to address potential concerns about road salt. (Poop in the water and PCBs are the focus at the moment, and mitigations for those don’t do much to address chlorides.) Even with the caveat that the projects won’t necessarily address what seems to be your concern, you’ll also note that the county has identified 1,176 potential stormwater management retrofits, declared 159 of them high-priority, and has identified funding for 11. (Hint: that’s part of why I’m confident in saying that there’s a lot of work yet to be done.) One bigger fish may be figuring out to complete the rest of the projects. There’s even the potential for being able to lobby in Richmond, since anything requiring changes on private land was automatically deprioritized because Dillon–regardless of the potential impact of the project. Anyway, if you’re looking for numbers, I don’t think you’ll find any to support your position. The impact of MUP salt on 4MR is of a low enough priority that there hasn’t been much effort put into studying it, versus the much larger identified and unresolved issues.

Quote:

You’re still not getting it. It’s not just how much salt goes down, it’s where it goes. A pound of salt next to a stream may have a much greater impact than a pound of salt in a parking lot farther from a stream. This is about quality, not just quantity.

You keep saying that over and over and over, but have in no way explained why this is actually true, quantified the effect, justified its priority over other concerns, or even justified why the county should spend money specifically to study the issue.

[baiskeli]

@mstone 104178 wrote:

Nope. You’re the one arguing that there’s an issue. You do the homework

I didn’t make an assertion. You did. I simply asked questions. You gave me answers that requite backing up.

Look for the documents about where the drains go. (Including every little culvert coming off a parking lot.) Look into how Arlington is addressing runoff from private lots (hint: it has no power to do so). If you want to talk about the impact of TMDLs, please look into whether chlorides are a part of the 4MR TMDL plan and how that prioritizes this concern.

So until I find these documents for you, you have no idea what they say and you don’t know if you’re right or not?

If you DO know you’re right, then you must have already seen the documents. So please share them with us.

Yes, Arlington has spent a bunch of money on making things better, but there’s a long way to go. If this is really a concern for you, there are much bigger fish to fry than MUPs.

So? That doesn’t mean trails aren’t an issue. You’re using the same logic that motorists use against bikes – they’re small so they don’t matter.

I’ll leave it to you to review the stormwater management plan and identify those fish. You’ll note when you read the plan that most of the focus for at least the next decade is other things which aren’t going to address potential concerns about road salt.

Then maybe we should look more closely at road salt. Which is what I’m doing.

Anyway, if you’re looking for numbers, I don’t think you’ll find any to support your position.

I don’t have a position. You do. You haven’t given any numbers to support it.

The impact of MUP salt on 4MR is of a low enough priority that there hasn’t been much effort put into studying it, versus the much larger identified and unresolved issues.

That’s another completely unsupportable position – you’re saying that because something hasn’t been done, it means there’s no good reason to do it? Again, you sound like a motorist justifying ignoring the needs of cyclists.

You keep saying that over and over and over, but have in no way explained why this is actually true, quantified the effect, justified its priority over other concerns, or even justified why the county should spend money specifically to study the issue.

It’s Hydrology 101. I said “may have a much greater impact.” I didn’t say I know it’s true, I didn’t claim that it has been quantified. I just asked a question. You insisted there can’t possibly be an answer except the unsupported one you gave. You jerked your knee in a way that is amusingly very much like the way motorists jerk their knees about those pesky elite hobbyist cyclists who clog the roads.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 103987 wrote:

Their houses are a sunk cost in this analysis.

If I knew I was going to be locked in my house I would want a bigger house.

Seriously, more active transportation options enable higher residential density. Higher residential density is associated with lower NON transportation GHGs per capita (part of which is due to less sq ft per person.) Something not typically included in BCAs.

[lordofthemark]

@baiskeli 104179 wrote:

You jerked your knee in a way that is amusingly very much like the way motorists jerk their knees about those pesky elite hobbyist cyclists who clog the roads.

I would say that a really detailed benefit cost analysis, of the kind used when we build an interstate highway, or a major subway line, is not justified when we want to add a bike lane. Some rules of thumb, based on general experience with complete streets is enough. To do a ridership projection, including scientificcally valid surveys of local modal preference, etc, etc is probably going to take $$ that far exceed the benefits of the lane.

I think the same probably applies in the case of salting MUPs. It certainly makes sense to address the broader issues of salting roads, what alternatives there are, etc. It probably does not make sense to do a full scale study for MUPS(unless you want to do it as a personal project) You adopt some basic rule of thumb – something along the lines of salt if the MUP sees a fair amount of use through the winter. And don’t otherwise.

This is meta Benefit Cost Analysis – when does the benefit of doing a BCA exceed the cost of doing it? (I have not read the entire thread, so if I have misread what this is about, I apologize – note I also apologize to my FS team)

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 103979 wrote:

We are going to make you an economist at this rate. Bwahahaha.:rolleyes:

Typical economist, over focusing on the issue of commensurability among different benefits. I KNOW we have a social cost of carbon for use in BCA (OMB publishes it) and I suspect you can get some data somewhere (from BCAs of major sewage projects) of the benefits of healthier streams.

The hard part here is determining things like A. What streams are effected, and how much is salt the constraining factor on their health (Mstone alluded to this but without geographic specificity) For example the part of 4MRT I commute on is downstream from Shirlington. My vague impression is that that part of Four Mile Run has plenty of other problems, such that a minor salt dump associated with the trail may well have zero incremental effect on the health of the stream. B. The incremental effect on cycling (and walking) of salting any given trail. As noted above, the impact of clearing in the winter on year round usage. C. How much salt actually goes into a given trailside stream from any given salted trail.

I cannot PROVE that ArlCos policy is optimal, or that it leans in the direction of too little trail clearing. But on reflection I think that the implication that this is something horrible, and so likely to be excessive clearing as to warrant the County going to the trouble of the above analysis to justify the policy, strikes me as a tad overwrought.

[baiskeli]

@lordofthemark 104183 wrote:

I would say that a really detailed benefit cost analysis, of the kind used when we build an interstate highway, or a major subway line, is not justified when we want to add a bike lane. Some rules of thumb, based on general experience with complete streets is enough. To do a ridership projection, including scientificcally valid surveys of local modal preference, etc, etc is probably going to take $$ that far exceed the benefits of the lane.

I think the same probably applies in the case of salting MUPs. It certainly makes sense to address the broader issues of salting roads, what alternatives there are, etc. It probably does not make sense to do a full scale study for MUPS(unless you want to do it as a personal project) You adopt some basic rule of thumb – something along the lines of salt if the MUP sees a fair amount of use through the winter. And don’t otherwise.

This is meta Benefit Cost Analysis – when does the benefit of doing a BCA exceed the cost of doing it? (I have not read the entire thread, so if I have misread what this is about, I apologize – note I also apologize to my FS team)

I wouldn’t want a complete study on whether it’s worth it, because I think it is, and a study would depend too heavily on things that are hard to measure against each other. But to sum up my views on the thread: it would be nice to know that the salting is the best possible salting that can be done to minimize impact. This is worth looking at because it’s possible salt from a trail inside a buffer zone is more damaging to water than salt on roads.

[baiskeli]

@lordofthemark 104186 wrote:

The hard part here is determining things like A. What streams are effected, and how much is salt the constraining factor on their health (Mstone alluded to this but without geographic specificity) For example the part of 4MRT I commute on is downstream from Shirlington. My vague impression is that that part of Four Mile Run has plenty of other problems, such that a minor salt dump associated with the trail may well have zero incremental effect on the health of the stream. B. The incremental effect on cycling (and walking) of salting any given trail. As noted above, the impact of clearing in the winter on year round usage. C. How much salt actually goes into a given trailside stream from any given salted trail.

I cannot PROVE that ArlCos policy is optimal, or that it leans in the direction of too little trail clearing. But on reflection I think that the implication that this is something horrible, and so likely to be excessive clearing as to warrant the County going to the trouble of the above analysis to justify the policy, strikes me as a tad overwrought.

Such a study might be worth doing. I wouldn’t require it to justify clearing the trails. It could be useful to determine how to clear the trails with the least impact on the streams though.

The problem is that nobody anticipated having a major pollutant come from runoff from a source INSIDE the buffer zone that is designed to mitigate pollution from runoff outside of it. It’s a new thing.

[lordofthemark]

@baiskeli 104190 wrote:

Such a study might be worth doing. I wouldn’t require it to justify clearing the trails. It could be useful to determine how to clear the trails with the least impact on the streams though.

The problem is that nobody anticipated having a major pollutant come from runoff from a source INSIDE the buffer zone that is designed to mitigate pollution from runoff outside of it. It’s a new thing.

Again, because I came late – are we mainly talking about Four Mile Run from Shirlington upstream to I66? Because otherwise I can’t think of any major transportation trails in NoVa that are inside stream buffers. 4MRT downstream from Shirlington, surely thats not considered a stream buffer. Custis trail is not even along a stream mostly. MVT is along the Potomac, but the Potomac is not buffered. GCCCT in Fairfax ix surely not salted, and most small stream valley trails are not.

[Steve O]

@baiskeli 104176 wrote:

Yeah, that would be ideal – like sending a streetsweeper up and down the trail all through the storm. But that probably wouldn’t be practical.

Disagree. If it’s sent out immediately at the end of the storm, that’s usually soon enough to beat the major packing down. And it’s much, much faster and hence cheaper. Just this week, with a broom I was able to sweep my sidewalk, front walk and stairs in about 90 seconds while the snow was still light and powdery. At the end of the day, after it had been walked on, it would have taken chemical treatment plus a lot more time.
I think we actually saw that very thing with the Custis this storm. They were out there during and just after the storm, and the trail is looking great. If they had waited until today to start work, it would be either impossible, or highly chemical- and time-intensive, hence more expensive.

And then I even question your, “But that probably wouldn’t be practical.” Why is it practical to run full-sized snowplows all over the place for the duration of storms on roads for cars, but not practical to do the same thing on the car-less roads (i.e., trails)?

[DismalScientist]

Why doesn’t NVRPA just pay Dominion to put a plow blade on the maintenance truck that went up and down the WOD between Columbia Pike and the Custis yesterday? Or how about contracting with Arlington County so that that part of the WOD could be cleared with or without pretreatment?

[mstone]

@baiskeli 104190 wrote:

The problem is that nobody anticipated having a major pollutant come from runoff from a source INSIDE the buffer zone that is designed to mitigate pollution from runoff outside of it. It’s a new thing.

For someone with no position who also wants no unsupported claims, you seem to be repeating an unsubstantiated position that consists of the following assertions:

1) ice melting chemicals are a major (non-trivial/non-ignorable) pollutant in 4MR
2) the park along the 4MR is designed to be a buffer zone to mitigate such pollutants
3) there are no other sources of ice melting chemicals in the park (that is, this is “new”)

If that is your position, why don’t you substantiate it? It should not be hard to determine whether the EPA has designated a TMDL for chloride for 4MR. If there is a TMDL for 4MR chloride, it should be possible to show that the park is designated as a mitigation for that pollutant in the storm water management plan. Someone else has already pointed out other sources of deicing runoff adjacent to the trail, have you explained why those don’t count, and why addressing those sources should be a lower priority than addressing treatments on the MUP?

If you really don’t have a position and aren’t interested in doing any research into the question, why keep bringing up the same points and ignoring the points raised by others?

[Vicegrip]

@baiskeli 104170 wrote:

For the record, I didn’t suggest closing the trail for environmental reasons.

You point out a great example of overuse of salt. I hope the salt on the trail is used more wisely.

We need to have bike paths and bike lanes that can be counted on. If we have safe reliable avenues to travel on then more will use them for commuting. This is key to getting people out of cars and into a healthy for human and planet way of getting around. The amount or chloride used is agrain in a bucket given the overall watershed. You want ot cut chloride polution go after the big guys first. Trust me the overuse is astounding and retention ponds don’t do squat to mitigate total chloride retention. The ponds trap silt and hydrocarbons and slow up surging which gully washes the streams. They also trap chloride which in this case is not a good thing.

Melter is overused. I see it all the time all over the place. People are expecting roads and walks to become clear and dry with a finger snap and think falling on their ass is someone elses fault. The reasons people dump too much salt are simple. Some suffer a lack of training. For some is also risk aversion and many just don’t care. Overuse is cheap and simple for the shortsighted.

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