Magnesium Chloride & Your Environment (Colorado Springs, Loveland: buying, cost, storage)

[snofarmer]

Unless you and your friend use a bidet and a cloth in the am then you may be a hypocrite?
Read a book or use any paper or wood products in your life or do you live in a hemp shack?

Trees are a recourse that can be quickly replaced over and over again.

Tell your mother or dead kid they should not drive in the winter.

You would rather choke the streams with sand or cinders and complain about how much fuel it takes to plow the roads.
Why even plow the roads?

PS I lived in the mountains at 9,000ft in a small ski town for years and grew up in northern MN I can drive in the snow& ice just fine.

[naturegirll]

Well, Snofarmer, trees may be replaceable but the soil and water isn't, which I guess means the trees in the affected area WON'T grow "over and over again"....

If I had it my way, there'd be no sand or any thing tossed all over the roads....

There are many people who can drive in it (or have the sense to not even try it), and there's probably 2 times more people who just don't have a clue....

[Idunn]

At the risk of being political, I will for a moment.

I've seen this repeatedly, people driving too fast for conditions, often 20+ over the posted speed limit. On the same road, when it snows and it is snow packed, they actually slow down some. Many still drive like idiots, and too fast, particularly because on snow, but the general speed is lower. One could argue they (we) are actually safer at such times, because not only (generally) driving slower, but also paying greater attention. Talking on cell phones and doing one's nails while driving is another topic.

I've talked with the Colorado State Patrol, who have told me stories of being passed in a snow storm on I-25 by people driving 75mph, when in their prudent and skilled judgement they themselves would not go past 50mph. Then, if likely happening upon the culprit up ahead in a ditch, they would cite them for careless driving. Or of all the people who use even school zones as their racetrack. Of times when they had intensive speed patrols on some mountain road, when drivers would pass 2, 3 or more patrol cars having pulled someone else over, but speeding on to be perhaps caught by a fourth. In truth, any number of things that suggest the problem does not lie with roads or maintenance, or even weather, as much as just idiotic people and their poor driving habits.

As far as I'm concerned, people who do not like trees should live in the desert. People who do not respect trees should not live on this planet. My thought, anyway. This from someone who lives in a wooden house, and enjoys the feel and texture of wood, its life even when dead. So in this regard I am ambivalent. Trees died for this house and others, which is the bargain we make. My hope that the elements of my body will in time be consumed by them in recompense, as all cycles in nature. But trees are sentient, living beings, as all else within this Earth, no different from humans save form. The reason mankind is presently in such a precarious position, and the ecosystem of this Earth so degraded and endangered, is precisely due the mindset that excuses human action in their life supposedly in some way superior to any other.

Some might question that proposition. But no one should overlook the effects we have upon our environment, if for no other reason than it will directly influence their own life. These roads of ours serve as perfect example. While quite useful, they have numerous impacts, often negative. Since the question here is magnesium chloride, more generally any road salt, sand, or other method for road maintenance, then the bargain we make with anything used.

The National Park Service has a policy of not using road salts, and as little sand as possible. They do in fact use some magnesium chloride, but have told me only a fraction, just enough to keep sand from clumping. Rocky Mountain National Park serves as a good case in point. Just after a storm it is a veritable winter wonderland of beauty all bedecked in white, including the groomed roads. On leaving the Park one will at times transition from snow to wet or dry pavement. Others do use road salts beyond the boundaries of the Park. If dry roads are easier to drive on, subjectively I prefer landscapes all in white. In time the Park's roads will dry as well, but more slowly than elsewhere, without this chemical treatment. Their priorities are different, still concerned for public safety, but with an emphasis on not unduly harming the land they protect for all.

Then too, just beyond the border of the Park one will come upon some roadside trees now dead, most certainly killed by the recent adoption of magnesium chloride, wherein they had survived for decades before. There are unfortunately many dead and dying trees in the Park from mountain pine beetles, but at least not this. Then also, the plague of MPB is also a direct reflection of what mankind has wrought. An insect naturally part of this forest ecosystem, as needed as any other, but now out of balance.

This is what I question. Not that roads and transportation not necessary and of value. I use them as well. But when we poison trees and other vegetation, the water, the air, other life, even ourselves, when we need not, then the question why, and what is wrong with our reasoning.

What point a road if nothing remaining at the far end?

[snofarmer]

Funny, because I put human lives before trees I'm a hater. people first.
I've planted many trees and I own a few property's that are of heavily wooded.
I even heat with wood
(I had to kill a few trees but ho well.)
Maybe roads should only be built in treeless areas?

"Trees died for this house and others, which is the bargain we make"
Don't forget the roadways and ski areas, it is a concession.
Or is it a double standard as a home can be built with out using wood.


Now most evergreens are killed from the spray that is kicked up by the passing traffic.
This spray can be carried for a couple of hundred feet and it contains whatever chlorides(salts) that were used. Not from the runoff.

Regular old salt will also kill trees.
It's funny as I'm in a salt belt but you don't see the lawns and hardily any trees that are killed from using ice melting chemicals.

Treated salt will stay on the roadway, untreated will roll off to the sides where it does no good.
When the salt is on the road it gets diluted then runs off.
Ask anyone who works for the EPA and they will tell you the solution to pollution is dilution.

When the salt is treated they actually use less.

The spring run off will dilute the salts to minuscule levels.

I do agree that mag clor is the worst of of the ice melt chemicals and is already on the way to being banned. But the public's safety has to be addressed as not every traveler is an expert driver like you are. Nor should commerce be stifled because of this.


BUT.
CO has a much bigger killer of trees on the loose.
The pine Beatles or tree rust which is what I think the OP is seeing by the road and it confusing it with road salt.

If your driving a car you are part of the proublem. You use roads you are part of the proublem.
A lot or the things that make up your car or had to be mined in big open pits are also hard on the environment but you still have a car.

[4GenColoradan]

You're dead wrong about the brown trees being beetle kill, snofarmer. I know that varmint well. These are healthy, mature, picture-perfect ponderosa pines being killed strictly along roadsides by mag chloride. And not just "a few" -- many thousands statewide. I'm ashamed of CO for permitting this to happen.

[Bob from down south]

Originally Posted by 4GenColoradan

You're dead wrong about the brown trees being beetle kill, snofarmer. I know that varmint well. These are healthy, mature, picture-perfect ponderosa pines being killed strictly along roadsides by mag chloride. And not just "a few" -- many thousands statewide. I'm ashamed of CO for permitting this to happen.

And you know it's mag chloride...how?

No...sale

[phetaroi]

I can believe that mg chloride hurts the environment. It's not naturally in that environment, and there's no way that chemical is conducive to plant growth.

But, where's the balance in that viewpoint. Did you take a hot water shower this morning? Turn on the furnace? Drive to work in your car? Cook breakfast? All of those things (and plenty more that you do) harmed the environment.

Man affects the environment -- mostly in negative ways -- every day. But keep in perspective how much man effects the vast majority of the land in the West. Pick any line of latitude or longitude in Colorado and walk it in a straight line (if you even can) and tell me how much of that land even sees a man in a day or a week or a month or a year.

That we aren't going to treat our roads is simply not going to happen. Period. The question is, how can be best do so.

[snofarmer]

At CDOT's annual winter operations briefing on Oct. 25, maintenance superintendent Randy Jensen said the department is trying to substitute liquid de-icer for sand-salt mixes because the fluid is more environmentally friendly.

CDOT extols





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From the SummitDaily

"I think the beetles are killing the trees faster than the mag chloride," said county road and bridge director John Polhemus. While the county treats nearly all its gravel roads with mag chloride, Polhemus said the county is aware of the environmental concerns.

"The salts in the soil make it more difficult for plants to take up moisture," said researcher Betsy Goodrich. "We don't know for sure yet if it kills trees," she said. Ongoing studies should determine toxic concentrations, and how long it takes for trees to die from magnesium chloride poisoning, Goodrich said.

Most of Summit County's gravel roads are treated with magnesium chloride to keep the dust down. The frequency depends on traffic volume, said assistant country manager Thad Noll

[jazzlover]

Where does mag chloride come from? It is processed from mud dredged from the Great Salt Lake in Utah--emphasis on SALT. Most coniferous trees need acidic soil in which to thrive. So, adding salt content to mountain soils is not going to have a positive effect on coniferous tree growth.

[Shuffler]

Originally Posted by Bob from down south

And you know it's mag chloride...how?

No...sale

I always thought it was more a combination of things....beetles, mag chloride, heavy metals in vehicle exhaust, and all that sand that gets washed off the sides of the highways....doesn't seem like a healthy environment for those trees, but what do I know.