There's too much salt in Westchester County reservoirs. The culprit? Rock salt from roads

Yahoo

22-03-2025

So much rock salt has seeped into the water supply in the Lower Hudson Valley that a Westchester County reservoir that delivers drinking water to New York City might need to be shut down in 25 years.
'It will be too salty to drink,' Rohit T. Aggarwala, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection said during a press conference Friday in Croton Gorge Park, as water from the New Croton Dam cascaded down.
Aggarwala came to discuss a new DEP study, which found rising levels of salinity in the Croton System reservoirs that provide water to New York City and Westchester County.
Over a 30-year period, salt levels in the main New Croton Reservoir have tripled. At the current rate, the reservoir would reach the state's maximum allowable levels of chloride, salt's main component, by 2108. And the Amawalk Reservoir in Somers — one of the smallest of the Croton System's 12 reservoirs — might need to be shut down by 2050.
Aggarwala likened the task ahead to government eradication efforts following studies linking pesticides and other contaminants to environmental harm.
'We now need to focus on road salt as something that is harming our environment and is going to undermine the infrastructure that our cities and our towns depend on every day,' Aggarwala said.
The study said the reservoirs in Westchester County east of the Hudson River have abnormally high levels of salt, largely because of road salt runoff from the region's major thoroughfares — I-84, I-684 as well as the Taconic and Saw Mill parkways.
Salt in drinking water can lead to hypertension and high blood pressure in humans and can do damage to watershed ecosystems, the study notes.
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To combat the rising levels, the DEP is encouraging the state and municipalities to reduce or eliminate the use of salt when de-icing roads and to consider alternatives like brine, calcium magnesium acetate and potassium acetate, the study said.
State Sen. Pete Harckham and Assemblywoman MaryJane Shimsky, Democrats representing the Lower Hudson Valley, have introduced legislation to address concerns highlighted by the DEP study.
'We must take the corrective steps needed to protect this resource, and we must do it right away,' Shimsky said. 'If we don't, the damage to our residents, agriculture, and wildlife will be irreversible and the cost of replacing our water infrastructure far more expensive.'
Harckham said wells in the northern Westchester County towns he represents have been shut down in recent years because of rising salt levels.
'You can look at that as the canary in the coal mine,' Harckham said. 'This is not about blame. This is about a teachable moment and a call to change behavior.'
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The legislation would evaluate the use of alternatives that would do less harm to the environment.
The DEP study acknowledged the safety contributions of road salt. One study found that accident rates are eight times higher before salt spreading than they are after it's spread. And road salt use reduced traffic accident costs by 85%.
Thomas C. Zambito covers energy, transportation and economic growth for the USA Today Network's New York State team. He's won dozens of state and national writing awards from the Associated Press, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Deadline Club and others during a decades-long career that's included stops at the New York Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Record of Hackensack. He can be reached at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Westchester, NYC reservoirs have high salt levels from road rock salt