2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
5/25/2021 | 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM | Road Salt Legacies: Quantifying Fluxes of Chloride to Groundwater and Surface Water across the Chicago MSA | Virtual Platform
Road Salt Legacies: Quantifying Fluxes of Chloride to Groundwater and Surface Water across the Chicago MSA
In the city of Chicago, which receives more than 90 cm of snow annually, thousands of tons of road salt are applied to roadways each winter. While much of the applied salt runs off to nearby waterways during snowmelt events, some percolates to shallow groundwater, affecting public supply wells and leading to elevations of chloride in baseflow. In the present study we have created a spatially distributed chloride mass balance (1995-2015) across the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA). Our results show that inputs of the two largest sources of chloride, road salt and wastewater, increased by 30% and 35%, respectively, between 1995 and 2005. During the same period, however, riverine chloride loads leaving the CMSA remained essentially flat. Accumulation magnitudes of legacy chloride vary across the CMSA as a function of both chloride inputs and retention rates. While inputs are highest in the city center, where road densities are also high, retention rates are highest in suburban and rural areas, where there are fewer impervious surfaces and road runoff can percolate to groundwater. The present results highlight the importance of legacy chloride to water quality dynamics in North American cities.
- Urban
- Land use
- Anthropogenic
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Presenters/Authors
Kimberly Van Meter
(), University of Illinois at Chicago, kvanmete@uic.edu;
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Erich Ceisel
(), University of Illinois at Chicago, eceisel2@uic.edu;
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