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Environmental News
Kirsti Marohn

Spanish-language training aims to curb overuse of road salt

MnDOT has been cutting back on salt to melt ice on the state’s highways.
Over the last few years, MnDOT has been cutting back on using salt to melt ice on the state’s highways. MnDOT also offers "smart salting" training for property managers who maintain parking lots, sidewalks and driveways.
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News 2017

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A training course on helping to prevent pollution from road salt is being offered in Spanish for the first time in the Twin Cities. 

The pilot course, designed by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, aims to teach property managers "smart salting" practices to reduce chloride pollution in lakes, rivers and streams.

The Lower Mississippi River Watershed Management Organization is offering the virtual course in Spanish on Sept. 19. 

As part of its 10-year plan, the watershed organization is expanding its outreach and multilingual education to more people, including Latino communities in West and South St. Paul, said administrator Joe Barten.

“We identified that we really haven't done a great job of reaching out to those communities in the past,” he said. “So we saw this as an opportunity to try something new.”

The training course is geared toward people who manage private or public property, including landscaping or maintenance companies that maintain roads, sidewalks and parking lots for apartment buildings, shopping malls and homeowners’ associations.

“There's all of those private companies that are out there spreading salt with smaller vehicles that account for a lot of the use on the landscape,” Barten said.

Chloride from road salt is causing water quality problems throughout the Twin Cities and other parts of the state. About 50 Minnesota lakes and streams are considered impaired due to excess chloride levels, including Thompson Lake in West St. Paul.

Barten, who’s also a senior resource conservationist with the Dakota County Soil and Water Conservation District, said water monitoring shows spikes in chloride levels in the watershed’s lakes and streams that are affecting aquatic life.

 "It doesn't look like a big deal on one property, on one driveway, on one parking lot,” he said. “But our water bodies, our lakes and our streams, they're receiving the cumulative effect from every single property in the watershed."

The training teaches about the impacts of salt on water resources and how to manage their property while reducing the total amount of salt they need to use.

Property managers interested in the Sept. 19 course should register by Sept. 12.

If the program is successful, the watershed organization will consider offering the course in other languages, Barten said.