Road salt could be contaminating your water with lead

Salt levels in a river that serves as the primary source of tap water for 85,000 people in Ocean County rose so much due to road deicing that water customers instead drank from a reservoir for the entire month of March.

The saltiness of the Metedeconk River is a symptom of a long-gestating problem in New Jersey that recalls the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

How did this happen?

Four consecutive weeks of snow and ice required the use of tons of road salt across the Shore. Another round of sleet and snow — and salt — enveloped the area on Monday morning.

The elevated salt levels risk delivering more than just a briny flavor.

High amounts of sodium chloride — the compound that makes up rock salt — can strip lead soldering from pipes in older homes, flushing those lead particles into your glass of water. That is what happened in Flint, prompting a water and public health crisis still being reckoned with.

“There are lots of chances for saltier water to interact with these pipes and mobilize these contaminants," said Sujay Kaushal, an associate professor of geology at the University of Maryland. "In Flint, they had the lead in their service lines mobilized."

The Shore doesn't need to look to Michigan for an example of this happening. We've had our own experiences.

From Toms River to Middletown, schools in New Jersey have repeatedly failed lead testing, resulting in water fountains being shut down and emergency lead poisoning screenings being scheduled.

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Lead poisoning is especially dangerous to children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Symptoms are often hard to detect by the untrained eye

No amount of lead concentration in a child's blood is considered safe

Lead exposure can damage or stunt the development of practically every system in a child's body and has been linked to decreased intelligence and behavioral issues

What Brick can tell us

The Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority struggled for 18 months to find an answer after multiple rounds of testing found its water was causing lead to leach out of pipes in customers' homes, starting in the 2014 summer.

Acidity in the water is now under control but during an internal investigation, the Brick MUA learned that the "normal" level of chloride in the Metedeconk was, in fact, no longer normal. It had doubled within the last 10 years.

“Part of the process of finding a solution is finding the cause," said Joe Maggio, director of water quality at the Brick MUA. "We found that chloride has been increasing in the Metedeconk year over year and that is likely due to road salting.”

The New Jersey Department of Transportation has put down, on average, 300,000 tons of rock salt and 1.7 million gallons of brine and liquid calcium chloride on state highways during the last seven winters.

That doesn't include what townships and counties spread on their own roads: Ocean County, for example, used 3,700 tons of salt on county roads just for the January 4 blizzard.

While the standard level of chloride in the river water is higher than ever before, the figure soars to even loftier heights — although rarely near the U.S. EPA safe drinking water rule on chloride — during the pulses of salty water that flow after snowstorms.

"Over the last month we've been using our reservoir source almost exclusively because of the elevated chloride level in the river," said Rob Karl, source water supervisor at the Brick MUA. The utility has the rare ability to switch between water bodies.

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Widespread problem

Researchers have found that the consistent use of road salt in the Northeast has heightened salt levels in the water year round because the chloride has penetrated into the groundwater, where it seeps back out into rivers and streams.

"New Jersey was kind of ground zero for all these increases," said Kaushal, who has been studying how road salt usage has changed bodies of water.

It's a sweeping predicament. Just take a look at a water glass in your cabinet.

"You'll notice a thin white film that will stay on your glass all winter long and maybe even in the summer," Kaushal said. "That’s dissolved salts."

New Jersey American Water's Coastal North network, which serves some 335,000 people in Monmouth and northern Ocean counties, acknowledged in a statement that "chlorides are not removed by any of the treatment processes we use" but that the company combats corrosion by using a chemical compound known in the industry as a corrosion inhibitor.

While acknowledging that road salts are a threat to the environment, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection leaves regulation of salt usage to the state transportation department, according to a DEP spokeswoman.

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The NJDOT did not respond to questions from the Asbury Park Press.

The Federal Highway Administration doesn't put limits on road salt but "we encourage states to use it judiciously and follow best practices," said Nancy Singer, a spokeswoman for the FHWA,

Safety first

Prior to salt, which lowers the freezing point of water, snowy roads were cleared and plied with sand and other abrasives to break up ice.

Road salt usage became more and more commonplace after World War II when highways became integral to the nation's economy.

The total amount of salt used on American roads doubled every 5 years in the 1950s and 1960s, according to the Transportation Research Board.

And for good reason: A 1992 study by Marquette University concluded that applying salt to roadways reduced injury crashes by 88 percent versus no treatment.

What's next?

In recent years, alternative deicers have been developed — including off-the-wall options like beet juice, beer waste and cheese brine — as a response to these water quality concerns. None is in any position to replace rock salt.

"I have not seen any alternative chemical that shows much promise," said Victoria Kelly, manager of environmental monitoring at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. "That’s not to say that it's not out there but I follow this pretty closely and I haven’t seen anything like that.”

The most auspicious way forward appears to be simply using salt more efficiently.

Local governments are being encouraged to use brine ahead of storms, invest in technology that spread salts more evenly and to consider simply leaving some roads alone — no doubt a tough sell to those who live on or use those streets.

“Can we go back to a time where we don’t have every road free of ice and snow all of the time?" Kelly asked. "I don’t know the answer but I think that’s an important conversation to have."

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Russ Zimmer: 732-557-5748, razimmer@app.com, @russzimmer