Road salt is imperiling US waterways. States might have a solution.

Read the full story at Grist.

Environmental activist Sue Nissen wears a teaspoon on a string around her neck, which she likes to hand out to lawmakers during hearings in the Minnesota state legislature. That’s because one teaspoon of salt is enough to pollute five gallons of water, making it inhospitable for life. 

Road crews dump more than 20 million metric tons of salt on U.S. roads each winter to keep them free of ice and snow – an almost unfathomable number of teaspoons. Now, Nissen’s organization, Stop Over Salting, is pushing for Minnesota to pass a bill to reduce that figure by helping applicators learn how to use less of it — a technique called “smart salting.”