CLEVELAND — For nearly the last 90 years, salt has been used to melt snow and ice.

What You Need To Know

  • ODOT has access to nearly 400,000 tons of salt this winter 

  • Over-salting can kill plants and grass. 

  • Fish have been known to adapt to the lifestyle

During every Ohio winter, salt is spread across more than 3,000 miles of road to battle ice and snow.

This year, the state has 375,000 tons of salt ready to go. This cost nearly $23 million.

While salt is necessary for safe travel, using too much can cause serious damage to roads, plants and waterways.

As of the end of January, the Ohio Department of Transportation has used about 63,000 tons of salt.

It’s quick and effective, but too much of it can have lasting environmental consequences. Some of them are irreversible.

“You want to put it in the areas that you're walking, and you want to be sure it's not touching the grass or any of your plants," said Amy Roskilly from Cuyahoga Soil & Water Conservation District. "So, the cells that are in this grass itself are going to explode."

Roskilly has spent a lot of time researching salt damage, how to prevent it and how to fix the damages.

She says the damage has been done.

"Our aquatic life, our plant life, is adjusting as much as it can," said Roskilly. "You know, some will survive, some won't. We need it. It's not that we don't need salt, but we just don't need it at the amount that we have it. So, there's about $10 billion worth of damage that's caused annually on our roadways across the U.S. due to salting. When salting your property, a coffee cup can cover up to ten sidewalk squares. A little goes a long way."

Brent Kovacs with District 12 Ohio Department of Transportation has seen tens of thousands of tons of salt go in and out of the storage facility. Both Cuyahoga Soil & Water Conservation District and ODOT work together to create plans not to over salt. Kovacs says the salt comes from mining Lake Erie and ODOT’s drivers know how not to use to much of it.

“We have controls in all of our trucks that allow us to control how much salt goes out on the road," said Kovacs. "So, we're going to adjust our salt amount that we use per the conditions that we face.”

ODOT fine tunes salt distribution to be both effective and cost-efficient. The salt comes from taxpayer dollars and ODOT says it works continuously to get the most out of each ton.