At the latest city council meeting on January 22, local resident Deb Del Zoppo related that she was concerned of the City of Ludington's practice of dumping excess plowed snow down near Lake Michigan in the Loomis Street Boat Launch parking lot.  You may notice the piles of snow melting in the warmer weather and seen the debris and salt residue left over; her concern was that the road salt and other bad contents were tainting the waters of the lake when they would inevitably be conveyed there after rainfall.

Councilor Kathy Winczewski was sympathetic at the end of the meeting and suggested some alternative areas away from the second biggest freshwater lake in the Western Hemisphere (by volume, for you Lake Huron enthusiasts who stress surface area).  City Manager John Shay seemed more pragmatic, noting that wherever the City DPW puts the snow, even if it's the side of the street, the salt will eventually work its way through the catch drains and filter down to the great lake anyway.

The City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) and other local media made little of the exchange, however, just one week later the headline on the top of page one, with a by-line from esteemed Michael Casey of the Associated Press warns us that "Salt, the solution to winter's dangers, threatens U.S. waters" (this Charlotte Observer link has the full article).  It contains some alarming material such as:

"In the past 50 years, chloride concentrations in some lakes and rivers quadrupled and, in a few, increased a hundredfold... more than 40 percent of 327 lakes examined had experienced long-term salinization, and that thousands more were at a risk. Researchers also estimated nearly 50 lakes in the study, including small ones in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Rhode Island, could surpass the Environmental Protection Agency's chloride threshold concentration by 2050, potentially harming aquatic life."

It definitely sounds like a crisis and sounds like something that could be preventable by changes of policy.  Casey even mentions some jurisdictions using beet juice and beer as road clearing alternatives.  With such claims and odd cures, all made with passing references to studies condensed down for reader consumption boosting the nature of the crisis, I always suggest looking up the facts... after looking at the writer's history of similar claims.  

Back in 2007, Michael Casey warned us about Global Warming Wreaks Havoc With Nature, a series of interviews with climate scientists making some big claims without a lot of science behind them.  One of those 'scientists' interviewed, Camille Parmesan, has since prevented independent replication of her own dubious climate research on butterfly extinctions and failed to publish her new observations that populations that she once claimed had been extirpated by global warming and led to her placement on the IPCC, have now returned.  Among many other activities most would consider bad science. 

Michael Casey has reported on this and many other pseudo-scientific events and has done it with an almost "if it bleeds, it leads" style over the years.  He has probably related at one time or another every aspect of global warming/climate change over the years, even the aspects that have been proven false or unverified since; do not expect updates on his older articles noting that.  

So let's calmly look at the facts now that we're out of the red alert mode.  Back before this salinization scare came out of nowhere, and you can bet that some of this hysteria is being whipped up by those with a stake in all that money being threatened by the Trump Administration in the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, there were long-term studies done involving salinization that showed a mixed bag and likely was less political.  In Long Term Trends of GL Major Ion Chemistry, the various ions present in the lake are looked at over a forty year period, among these are Chloride ions found in road salts.

It even charts the sodium and chloride character over most of that period for all five great lakes:

While the study indicates that the lakes get more ionic in character the closer they are to 'civilization' where salts and other chemicals enter the lake, it seems somewhat inconclusive, since during the same intervals where the upper great lakes were experiencing more salinization, the lower lakes, Erie and Ontario, were actually dropping in chloride ion content.  

When one considers that the two smaller lakes had smaller amounts of chlorine in them than they had before despite the more prevalent use of road salt in the areas around them in that period, perhaps the reason why salinization is increasing in other lakes is not so clear as our AP writer would have you believe.  

Let's not go so quickly into crisis mode on research that is not conclusive, and may lead to bad public policy which puts lives in danger.  

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The aesthetics are pretty lousy for those who choose to tour Ludington in April and May and see an amorphous black blob of dirty snow with bonus prizes therein obscuring their view.  I can't imagine what the seagulls must think about it when it covers their main hangout area, offering poor food alternatives to them.

I think it's a worthwhile game to explore the alternative sites for snow-- and to note that the same person who was dismissive of the topic was the same person who thought it was totally acceptable for the City to bypass pump millions of gallons of raw sewage into the PM Bayou.  

Just imagine if it were one of us local citizens dumping that dirty snow from our driveways on Loomis St. ramps. Would be a totally different story imho. So, the continuing collusion by one gov't. authority with a city authority will see to it that nothing changes, and the pollution will go unabated as usual.

Although I can understand the concern people have for planet Earth, they fail to realize that we have only been here a tiny fraction of time during it's existance, so I doubt a small amount of road salt is going to make much difference one way or another. After all a short distance under the surface in many parts of Michigan are large salt deposits that were deposited when ancient seas that covered Michigan dried up.

"The land that is Michigan holds its most ancient history within its geological record. Billions of years of lava flows, increased tectonic movement, the ebb and flow of seas, and erosion created the land we know now as Michigan.

The first advanced inhabitants of this land came during the Paleozoic Era which was the first of the Phanerozoic Eon. The contours of the state that give it a mitten appearance would not exist for another few hundred million years, during the Cambrian Period. Much of North America including most of Michigan was covered in water during the start of this era and located along the equator"

Why not do one better and dump the excess snow in an area drained by a 'combined sewer' which not only serves as a sanitary but as a storm sewer.  I don't know enough about Ludington-down-under, but I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some sewers doing double duty.  If there isn't, dump the excess snow in the plains near the wastewater treatment plant and when it melts you get most of it treated.  

Many residents of Ludington are probably unaware of the history of salt manufacturing in our town which was in its heyday about 100 years ago.  According to Michael Nagle's biography of Justus Stearns, in 1917, Stearns had been running the Stearns Salt and Lumber Company as an anchor business for many years.  That year, with most of the area's forest depleted and in the regrowth phase, he sold off the Ludington sawmill and announced plans to expand operations at his salt block in the Fourth Ward.  A new well was drilled and additional improvements made to increase capacity to 750,000 barrels per year.  A strike happened in 1919, with a small cadre of workers looking for a 9 hour day and wage increases.  "Stearns sold his salt block and all twelve acres of property in Ludington's Fourth Ward to Morton Salt in 1923."

That salt block would close for good in 1932, and Ludington's Dow Chemical plant would be built in that acreage in 1942-43.  

That is correct X.  Salt brine wells are still in use all around the Ludington area. Thanks for the very interesting link.

This is a picture that Aquaman posted in the photo section of this forum back in 2014. It shows  Stearn's lumber mill and salt brine well drilling rigs.

Speaking of science, has anybody locally took any pictures of the super blue blood moon that they can share with us.  A rare lunar event happened today, albeit Ludington wasn't the best place to observe it.

I was able to get a good photo of this gorgeous phenomenon which I am sharing, although I prefer a natural colored moon. 

It's interesting that the sand that blows up onto the Stearns park paved surface and highway 11 is hauled away not returned to the beach as it might contaminate the beach area from the fuel and oil drips from the vehicles that travel there. But in the winter they dump huge amounts of the same type of contaminants plus the road salt to run off into our fresh water lakes. Just because our city and others have always have done it this way,  It might be time to take another look at what the city can do to make a differenced. City will say, it's close for snow disposal , faster turn around for dump trucks ,lower fuel cost,  Parking lot isn't being used anyway and it just goes away with the warmer weather.  Citizens should say it is polluting our lakes. 

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