As Dan noted earlier, the Seattle Times ran a front-page editorial today headlined “Seattle refuses to use salt; Roads snow-packed by design.” The piece by Times consumer-affairs reporter Susan Kelleher—replete with shocked italics and scare quotes (“it turns out ‘plowed streets’ in Seattle actually means ‘snow-packed,’ as in there’s snow and ice left on major arterials by design” and leading language (the city doesn’t just have policy of not salting roads; it “refuses”; drivers are “pretty much on their own”—argues, essentially, that Seattle’s decision to not salt roads is absurd and out of step with what all other cities “typically” do. The story briefly mentions that Seattle leaders are “environmentally sensitive,” but immediately dismisses their concerns with a barrage of pro-salting quotes from a consultant. The story has been embraced by the right-wing blogosphere, in posts with headlines like “Enviro Nuts in Seattle Refuse to Salt Roads!” and “Compromising Public Safety—by Design!”
Not only is this reprehensible, inaccurate hysteria-mongering (OMG! The city wants to keep YOU from driving more than 30 mph because of some stupid fish!); not only does it, as Dan notes, ignore the Times’ own reporting on the health of Puget Sound; it’s also a pathetic excuse for an argument. If the Seattle Times wants to make the case that we should dump tons of salt and chemicals into Puget Sound for the convenience of drivers, fine, but they should at least come by that argument honestly—by explaining what Seattle leaders’ environmental concerns actually are, instead of summarizing them dismissively in a single quote by a transportation-department bureaucrat.
Here’s what the Seattle Times won’t tell you about salting roads.
Road salt can kill trees and fish.
It also changes water chemistry, causing certain minerals to leach out of soils and increasing water acidity.
It causes chemical imbalances in plants, inhibiting root growth and disrupting the uptake of nutrients. This makes it harder for plants to serve as buffers that slow the runoff of other contaminants into the watershed, and can negatively impact animals that feed on plants.
The salts also affect mammals and birds, poisoning some birds outright and causing behavioral changes in other animals.
Salts accelerate the corrosion of streets, bridges, sidewalks, and vehicles.
Canada has declared road salt toxic. And at least 15 states have adopted a low-salt method of de-icing roads because of environmental concerns.
Contrary to what the Seattle Times would have you believe, not salting roads isn’t some wacky idea dreamed up by a bunch of kooky radical environmentalists. It’s actually a mainstream policy based on common sense and sound environmental judgment—a policy that’s been embraced by many other cities in the U.S., Europe, and Canada. Ultimately, though, the Times’ front-page editorial was a statement of belief: The belief that getting everywhere as quickly as possible, in a car, is a paramount human right. If you believe that, then it follows that you’ll also believe Seattle leaders are obligated to uphold that right, the health of Puget Sound and its animals, plants, and aquatic life be damned.
@40 ivan – Why the fuck don’t you have chains? Jesus, they cost $30 and problem solved. I’ve been driving all over town in my little Honda. Up icy hills, down icy hills. It’s no problem, because I have fucking chains.
So, quit your bitching about salt.
@50: What the hell makes you think that people who want to clear the roads are “conservative?” The “government shouldn’t clear the roads” philosophy strikes me as one of conservative libertarianism. As a liberal, I think the government has a role in helping people to get where they’re going safely.
You’re weird.
@51: What ECB did was be a completely insufferable you-know-what. If I say the word, I fear it will just bolster her persecution complex.
@14 is right, right, RIGHT! Salt judiciously on the once-in-a-blue-moon episodes — such as the one we’re in now. Not every street, not every storm. But for god’s sake clear the arterials.
And he’s also made it possible for me to have “Ivan Meets G.I. Joe” stuck in my head for the last several minutes. Thank you, Clash!
The difference is volume. I’m from upstate NY and yes, the salt is a total mess. If anything, Erica should be thrilled at the fact that the salt basically EATS CARS ALIVE!
But comparing that to the extremely sporadic and necessary use in Seattle, especially to get the busses running, seems a little off to me.
I love Erica. I love Erica!
#53, this is about salting roads and hurting the environment. Investing more in environmentally-friendly snow equipment is a different argument. Salting roads, strip mining, driving commuter cars, clear cutting old growth forests… all unneccessary practices that we shouldn’t be doing in the most environmentally progressive city in the country (Seattle).
What Erica Barnett doesn’t say in her post: Several of the sources she quotes have an obvious bias and want to make salt sound as hazardous as possible. The sources she quotes which are more objective are also more guarded in their critique of salt. For instance, from one of these sources: “Scientists who study road salt’s effect on the ecology do not advocate leaving icy roads untreated. They hope to learn more about how to prevent salt’s negative impacts without sacrificing public safety. “
And by the way, I don’t even own a car. Yet the city’s icy streets are even more of a burden on me than on drivers. I can’t get in my car and hope for the best; all I have is a dysfunctional Metro system and nonexistent taxis.
@56:
The thing I don’t get about people like you is why you would devote your time and energy to maintaining a blog advocating going car-free–and I totally agree with you on the environmental impacts of car ownership–and not one on, say, solving global hunger.
I bet you donate money–if you have any–to organizations like Greenpeace that would rather see millions of poor people starve than boost agricultural production by using GMOs. You probably stay up at night worrying about how to prevent people from driving their cars–and I agree that car drivers are a problem–rather than trying to think up ways to provide care to the millions who die from treatable diseases like malaria and cholera.
People like you have priorities so out of whack it’s hard for me to take you seriously anymore.
Oh, but screw the starving colored people. Save the fucking whales!
Hey, Seattle, remember when you said you’d only use heroin intermittently, when absolutely necessary. Once or twice a year, at most, is what you said. And how much heroin do you use now, Seattle? And now you want start hitting the road salt, and it will be different?
If you look at it with a larger perspective, this is actually a very pro-automobile posting from the typically very anti-automobile author.
As an ex-Midwesterner, I know exactly what salt does…it eats cars.
If Erica really wanted all of our cars to disappear, she’d be demanding 24/7 salting (pre-emptive salting) everywhere.
In a cloud of rust, we’d be living in an car-less Ericatopia (granted, the fact that every bus would also rust would be a set back…)
Frankly, I’m touched by her ability to understand and appreciate the views of those of us on the opposite side of her opinion for a change.
In fact, because of this post, every time I pull into a convenient parking space near places I like to go…I’ll think of Erica and give her a silent thanks.
Not anytime soon, of course… Are you kidding me? In case you haven’t noticed, the fucking roads are covered in snow and I’m not dumb enough to let my fellow Seattle-ites careen into me.
@57:
Can you quantify for me how much environmental damage salting the roads once a year does? Is it more or less than the amount of environmental damage done by the added car accidents caused? What about the amount of damage done by the pollution from people driving because Metro is closed? Or the damage done by people who give up on Metro because they think it is unreliable due to this multi-day shutdown?
And is environmental damage the sole measure of moral harm? As a liberal–yes, I am, though you may not like it–I’m willing to take some degree of environmental damage if it means that people without jobs as flexible as mine can get to work, or if it means that elderly and disabled people who can’t walk on the icy roads can get to the supermarket, the doctor’s office, etc.
And how the hell is Seattle “the most environmentally progressive city in the country?” Philly has car-free days on some arterial routes; when Nickles wanted to close off a few residential streets people pitched a fit. New York City has far lower car ownership rates. California has far stricter auto emissions standards. What is it about Seattle that makes you think it’s the nation’s leader in environmental policy?
@ 52:
Not only do I have chains, I have four-wheel drive and an engine with a lot of torque and a compound low gear. It runs on biodiesel, too, bitches! At no time on this or any other thread have I complained about MY inability to get around.
Because I’m not about I, ME, MINE! I believe in looking out for other people, who might NEED their local government to look out for them, too.
If salt works, in certain places and only under certain conditions, and only in certain amounts and for certain periods of time, then the city’s refusal to use it at any time, in any amount, under any conditions, constitutes incompetence, if not outright misfeasance.
Nobody is calling for indiscriminate, universal, constant use of salt. No one. Not me, not the Seattle Times, not anyone. That’s just retarded.
And for credulous fucking hack “reporters” at the Stranger who defend such a fundamentalist “no salt ever” position, I’m here to call bullshit on you every time.
I can’t hold back any more. This one’s going out to you, @63:
So you’re on the floor, at 54
Think you can last – at the Palace
Does your body go to the to and fro?
But tonight’s the night – or didn’t you know
That Ivan meets G.I. Joe
He tried his tricks- that Ruskie bear
The United Nations said it’s all fair
He did the radiation – the chemical plague
But he could not win – with a cossack spin
The Vostok Bomb – the Stalin strike
He tried every move – he tried to hitch hike
He drilled a hole – like a Russian star
He made every move in his repertoire
When Ivan meet G.I. Joe
Now it was G.I. Joe’s turn to blow
He turned it on – cool and slow
He tried a payphone call to the Pentagon
A radar scan – a leviathan
He wiped the Earth – clean as a plate
What does it take to make a Ruskie break?
But the crowd are bored and off they go
Over the road to watch China blow!
When Ivan meets G.I. Joe
Haha, sorry, Cornball, I’m straight. Flattery will get you nowhere.
But you cool, man, I like your style.
If there was a problem yo I’ll solve it
Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it
according to all this bitching about how bad salt is- the midwest, northeast, Canada, anywhere else that has winter weather AND the need to have people able to move in that weather should look like Carthage.
But they don’t. And productivity is able to continue on.
I just wonder why these people who are bitching about human impact on the Sound aren’t also out there getting people to limit their breeding and setting limits on how many people can move into Seattle.
Those two things would certainly make more of a positive impact that salting roads once or twice a year.
Boy, if ECB had any idea how many private property owners and mangers are using salt in Seattle at this very moment she’d have a coronary.
Pedestrians and motorists – 1. Fish – ?.
I skipped the last third of comments since they got a little too feisty for me,
Put this in the print paper. I think it’s an important consideration, the balance between certain people’s need to move back and forth, and perhaps convincing a few people not to drive.
I think the city can’t go into an all-out stop, but it wouldn’t hurt the city to take a week off from driving to the corner store to pick up beer.
Does anybody know what the “chemical de-icer” is? I’m assuming it must be more environmentally friendly than salt, but then again, why are we not cool with salt, but we’re totally down with some sort of unknown chemical agent?
ECB, please do us all a favor and get laid!!! :-p
Part of this misses the point, the Seattle Time article is crap and very little research was done. I’ve seen plow trucks in Seattle with sanders and they had liquid de-icing tanks under the spreaders. A little searching on the Internet reveals this is commonly mixed with sand to wet it so it sticks in place and is heavier. There’s no mention of this in the article. So does Seattle use chemical deicing alternatives? Of course.
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/sn…
“SDOT uses anti- icing and de-icing products rather than salt to prevent corrosion while enhancing snow control operations.”
“SDOT has 27 trucks that can be fitted with plows and sanders, and also two de-icer trucks. Additional equipment from other Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) divisions is available for snow and ice response when necessary.
SDOT expands service in severe conditions to meet urgent needs of social service agencies. “
Cities still use salt on roads? I just spent 10 years in southeastern Idaho — it always looked like it does now through winter — and they used sand.
Had to get a new windshield every year, but still.
And, anti-car people ought to re-consider salt. It chews the shit out of your metal car.
Please, the Puget Sound is saltwater! And it snows SO much in Seattle and this would create such a salt load over time. Gimme a break. Salt rocks. You can watch the snow and ice melt away before you as you follow the salt trucks down the road.
#47
The poor, unfortunate, and disabled you refer to are already in the “fucked over” category. Our government may attempt to help them in some partially effective manner, but the degree of how fucked they are is unlikely to change much. This is sad, tragic even, but largely unavoidable when considering the bulk of the citizens upon whom they are dependent upon for services and the funding of those services, who aren’t willing to pony up the taxes to remedy the mess.
The people I’m (indirectly) addressing are those who aren’t Unfixably Fucked, they’ve just chosen (yes, chosen) an increasingly unsustainable lifestyle–from the distance they have to drive to afford a mortgage for their too-large home for their too-many children and their too expensive lifestyle. The price of gas jumps, the traffic goes to hell because of the weather, suddenly the whole equation is fucked. Many people are not yet irrevocably set on this path…unless they choose to do so. These are the people who need to “plan for this situation” for the rest of their lives. Do not live in a different city from that where you work. Live within walking distance of your daily needs. Live near public transit. Allocate 500 square feet per person in your household. Do not overbreed.
Or, don’t do all of those things and quit bitching about when it all turns to shit because of your lifestyle overhead.
I’m sorry, I’m as enviro as the next douchebag NWerner, but one day of salt is not going to ruin the fucking Sound. If this were a regular occurence (which it is not, which is why we don’t need to buy a shitload of plows), I might be worried, but as it is, this comes off as uber-ultra-douchebag Seattle stuff.
Chemical de-icer is usually another kind of salt (calcium chloride vs. sodium chloride), but occasionally it is an organic material like urea or ethylene glycol. All of these have minimal environmental effects, although overuse can cause browning of vegetation.
@75 tiktok
The people who can make choices can pay for them. The people who cannot choose need to be protected.
I’m talking about the people who are in housing, in central Seattle, who can’t make it to the food bank. And the people who live a couple of miles from two or three minimum wage jobs and can’t get to them because the city and county won’t play nice together. The city won’t care for the roads or work with Metro to keep essential bus routes going.
We can only hope the people who are driving to the corner store for beer–and the people who live in Everett and drive their SUV to a job in Redmond–will see the changes in the world and realize that their lifestyle is part of the problem.
Until/even if that doesn’t happen, the rest of us have every right to demand that our city find a way to keep the roads open and transit (at the very least) working. Salt might not be the answer, but Seattle clearly doesn’t have one that works. In the short term, people are suffering and something needs to be done.
All of us who live in dense neighborhoods and already commute by bike, foot, or bus need can take a break from patting ourselves on the back. This includes Erica C. Barnett. Congratulations–your lifestyle hasn’t been hurt by the snow.
Now kick the smug off your boots and start working towards making things better overall.
If you want to be positive at all about this, at least the godly car owners don’t have to worry about people on bicycles with all this ice; especially when they have to put chains on their H2.
Thanks for admitting you are a douchebag, F. Now I don’t need to point it out.
Unfortunately, it has been discovered that the acidity off the Washington coast is much higher than it is ‘supposed’ to be… in the span of 10 years it reached acidity levels they were predicting to see in 100 years.
Don’t be so selfish.
Have none of you ever lived in a city that salts the roads in the winter?
Even if you don’t give a shit about fish or the environment, do you care about your car? Some cities have banned salt, not so much for environmental reasons, but also because it rusts the shit out of your car. Cars in cities that regularly use salt have the floorboards and lower doors rusted clean through in 5 years or less. Road salt is corrosive as hell. It not only damages the environment, it destroys your car.
Thank you Seattle for not using salt.
@ 82:
Yeah, cars in cities that “regularly use salt.” But see, no one here is demanding that Seattle “regularly” use salt. So get off it. We’re asking that Seattle OCCASIONALLY use salt, like on Denny Way, during an 8-inch snowfall that is accompanied by a frreeze, so that people can drive or bike or ride buses on the streets they fucking paid for, to do whatever the fuck they need to do.
Not “regularly,” and not everywhere, and not when the streets are going to thaw two days later.
In other words, most of the time the opposite of
A is not Z. Most of the time it is somewhere from B to Y. The only people who keep insisting that Z is always the opposite of A are people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and stupid fucking credulous hacks like Erica C. Barnett.
In other words, fundamentalists. Hip and edgy mean dick. It’s fundamentalist logic and a fundamentalist mindset. if you’re not with us every day in every way, and for our reasons, then you’re the enemy. And it’s getting pretty fucking boring.
This is ridiculous. A couple thoughts…The economy is in a recession…by not salting the roads greater Seattle is effectively shutting down a large part of the economy. People can’t get to their jobs to earn money and people can’t get out to the stores to spend money. If you haven’t been paying attention, this is one of the worse holiday shopping seasons in decades. After christmas, the retailers will report huge losses, stocks will plummet and everyone will complain that it’s wall street’s fault. In reality, it essential that everyone be done to keep the economy of your city and country going. That is why we use salt in New York. If there’s only a week or two of snow in seattle a year, the salt will not leave a lasting effect on the evironment, nor on your precious cars. But it will allow my mother and father to get to work and my little sisters to go to school and get an education.
Has anyone considered what this does to the police force? the fire fighters? the danger created for hospitals and ambulances? what about the utility company when your lights go out? and METRO can’t send out buses if their going to endanger their riders and other cars on the road.
Roads need to be maintained during snow storms for the same reason we build roads in the first place. I wouldn’t sacrifice the safetly of my family or yours for a dozen salmon in a million years. Would you?
@65, hey I don’t wanna fuck you…just sing to you! Woot!
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@41/titkok. “before I started WHINING LIKE A BABY that the city/county/state wasn’t magically making all the snow and ice disappear overnight. That technology costs money, lots of money,”
I bought a can of salt for 69 cents at Safeway, slapped it down on my walkway and, presto, that ice was gone before I finished shoveling the driveway. And I didn’t even have to break a sweat! This new technology sure is great!
@83, lay off the fire fighters. The ladder truck I saw yesterday was chained up to within an inch of its life, and didn’t look like the snow was slowing it down much.
@82, one real risk is that occasional use of salt => regular use of salt. “You used it last time, if you’d have used it this time too, I wouldn’t have wrecked my car”. Cities wind up sending out the salt trucks every time it clouds over in order to avoid lawsuits. And given how we Seattleites piss and moan …
@ 86:
Yeah, “one real risk is that occasional use of salt => regular use of salt” — except when it isn’t.
Do not automatically assume the worst-case scenario. We pay our local governments to manage such risks, and we have every right to demand that they do so properly.
Nobody is demanding that we “send out the salt trucks every time it clouds over,” so quit making shit up. Leave that to the stupid fucking credulous hack fundamentalists on the Stranger staff.
Does anybody know what’s in this mysterious chemical de-icer?
Making sections of the road appear to be safe would not improve safety. It would encourage people to use their cars during weather conditions when there will be patches of ice frequently no matter how aggressive the road crews got about clearing and salting the roads.
If you think it is bad driving on icy roads the whole way, it is actually quite a bit worse to have more people driving more at faster speeds when they get to the ice.
Anybody would would protest in the summer if the city wanted to take a chainsaw to every damn tree near a road should also have as much concern about the idea of salting their roots.
@ 89:
Your opinion is only that. People still get to make their own decisions and decide their own thresholds for acceptable risk. I’m for a local government that enables as wide a spectrum of individual decisions as possible. You appear to be for the government restricting those choices — in other words, the nanny state.
ECB likes to frame these arguments as anti-car, which is crap. As I speak there’s yet another disabled Metro bus trapped in a snowbank outside my office. Hundreds of bus routes aren’t running. Most others are traveling snow routes and not servicing large parts of the area. Even if you could and wanted to walk to work, most sidewalks are not cleared, so you would have to walk in the street with the idiot drivers who may or may not be in control of their cars.
An awful lot of people don’t have the luxury of working from home or taking vacation days or days without pay, or blogging from their local coffee shop. Many provide essential services. Meanwhile, the disabled are simply trapped in their homes unless they have friends or relatives who can drive them to work, to the store, etc.
The world is not nearly as simple as Erica’s simple little mind.
@87: I made nothing up. Nor did I accuse anyone here of demanding salted roads 365 days. I posted what I regularly saw back east, one of those places where they “know how to deal with snow”. Remember that this is a town where the lawsuit-proof playgrounds don’t have any teeter-totters anymore.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m as stir-crazy as anyone else. It’ll be gone soon. Chill, all. Merry Christmas.
Erica, you write that “driving your car is not a human right”. What about those of us that would just like to use public transit to get from our homes to say, work, or the grocery store, or the dentist, or a medical appointment, or out to visit friends, or to see family on the holidays?
I’ve been unable to do all the above, because the roads are fucked, and buses and taxis can’t get to my neighborhood. Only my neighbors with SUVs are getting around; everyone else’s cars are covered in 9 inches of snow. I don’t have a car, and can walk a few places, but most of the times I’ve tried I turn back in frustration because the sidewalks and streets are a slippery mess.
So what would you say my rights are during this period of winter weather – to sit snowbound at home? What about those that have no option to get around but transit or taxis, and who live in in-city neighborhoods that are basically cut off from the city?
Thanks for the hits! Makes me Money! Woo hoo! ;-P
-Pat
The argument shouldn’t be about salting roads, which has a marginal impact, but keeping as many of the main roads plowed as possible. Discussing the merits of road salt is almost a red herring to the root of the issue.
Get snow tires and/or tire chains. Put them on. Leave extra time to get places and don’t drive like an idiot. Repeat.
Why is this so hard for people?
Garabage is piling up. How is that good for the environment?
why did it take 96 comments to get to the solution, dont salt the roads, it will be abused in the future when ecb’s bike is ran over after another ass hat who doesnt know how to drive plows into her chained up bike at the side of the road and she sues the city for a rplcmnt. Or some other hipster get knocked out from a falling limb cause the tree is dying from salt/de-icer poinsening….stop your bitchin and learn how to gear up and drive your car and you’ll find you can get anywhere you need to get or close enough to walk. Throwing salt down will pollute because of all the private peoples who will do it on their own property and continue to do so in the face of environmental impact, there is no such idea of just doin it in “certain” situations as the average home owner is doing it in EVERY situation.
No need to salt roads if the (almost defunct) car companies think about a modern traffic system.
Here is the clue to getting rid of oil-wasting lifestyles. This system could supplement cars, replace them, or be another kind of railroad (but MUCH better).
Amcars use renewable energy, travel anywhere without a road, and can be faster than plane travel. Try the idea at :
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* As a long-time activist with an MS degree in Environmental Engineering, the author worked in the Aircraft Industry, the EPA, as an Engineering magazine editor and as a Consultant. Had short stories and articles published in local publications, and has spent years noting the problems associated with cars, greenhouse effects and pollution world-wide. The manuscript published as The Power Play to end the car offers a mostly fictional, yet practical, solution to the most notable of those problems. [ISBN 978-1-60693-139-4 and 0-9716295-0-1]
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I unfortunatly had to deliver a major daily paper on these wonderful roads. In a POS van. I lived in the north east for 25 years, never chained up once. seattle and this area suck, the roads suck if you get anything besides rain. We pay ALOT to drive here and get nothing in return except higher insurance every time it snows and doubles the claims. fuck seattle and fuck the dailys. Im already fucked for working for them.
oh…then who among these people doesn’t like driving their own cars? i will be erred and irritated when they won’t allow me to drive my own ford cars, ford parts.