February 28, 2002

Ms. Janet Beauvais

Director
Existing Substances Branch
Environmental Protection Service
Department of the Environment
Ottawa, Ontario  K1A 0H3

Attn:  Canada Gazette, Part 1, December 1, 2001
 

The Salt Institute of Canada opposes listing of chloride salts as “toxic” under CEPA and supports implementation of programs to improve salt management practices without  use of a misleading “toxic” label. 

We offer these comments on behalf of our members who represent all major producers and sellers of the sodium chloride used to maintain Canada’s roads in safe winter driving condition.  We do not represent the other three inorganic chloride salts included in Environment Canada’s definition of “road salts.”

Nearly seven years ago, Environment Canada began its process leading to the recommendation of December 1, 2001.  At that time, we provided Environment Canada with hundreds of relevant studies of the environmental impacts of sodium chloride, one of the four chloride salts included in the assessment.  We also cautioned that since the environmental impacts of sodium chloride, at least, had been studied extensively for at least thirty years, it would be unlikely that Environment Canada’s assessment would discover any new impacts not already well understood and documented only a few years earlier in the Transportation Research Board’s Special Report 235.  That has proved to be the case. 

Now, after an extensive, if relatively insular, review of the evidence, the final assessment report has been submitted.  It found only one alleged impact not earlier identified in the TRB Report – a purported “salt intoxication” of a bird species, although it offered no evidence of either a causal relationship between ingested salt and the birds’ behaviours or any threat to the population stability of that species.   Both reports, therefore, shared the same evidentiary base.  Environment Canada, however, is recommending that “road salts” should be labeled “toxic” substances while the 1992 TRB report concluded that, even considering significant environmental impacts, the benefits and lack of feasible options means society should continue to use sodium chloride as its preferred winter maintenance material for the indefinite future.

How could these two reports reach such inconsistent outcomes?  The basic reason is the scope of the inquiry.  The Environment Canada assessment report reviews only one aspect of the several impacts of “road salts” – environmental, meaning non-human impacts.  The TRB report considers human impacts as well. These human impacts were outside the scope of Environment Canada’s assessment.  The human impacts are now timely and relevant as the government considers whether to declare “road salts” as “toxic” substances.  Experts have studied these human impacts even though Environment Canada has not.  Thus, the government must now evaluate three major documented impacts of “road salts:” 1) their effect on flora and fauna, 2) their effect on the economy and 3) their impact on the lives and personal security of every Canadian citizen.

A “toxic” listing is unwarranted.  There is a vastly superior policy option available to resolve this issue and protect the environment, assure future vitality of our economy and safeguard users of our wintertime highways and those whose lives depend on effective winter maintenance.  We recommend that the government indefinitely defer the determination of a “toxic” listing and provide leadership in assuring that the provinces and cities that use “road salts” (i.e., every Canadian province and municipality) employ state-of-the-art salt management practices.  All evidence suggests that even the adverse local, episodic and reversible impacts identified adjacent to heavily-travelled Canadian highways can be reduced below any “toxic” levels using proper snowfighting equipment and techniques.

HARM TO PLANTS AND ANIMALS

The draft assessment report elicited the largest public response of any CEPA public consultation to date.  Virtually all the comments were critical.  Environment Canada has made some modifications to the draft report and addressed some of the minor errors.  The final report, however, does not reflect the serious and significant critique of some basic questions.  

Common sense gives us the correct answer to the environmental assessment.  Canada has used road salts for 60-plus years to keep our winter roads safe and passable.  Yes, we’ve all witnessed browned evergreens and other evidences of salt’s impact.  We also have observed, and had our observations validated by scores of scientific investigations, that the impacts are not omnipresent, but local, the impacts are confined near the roadway environment not distributed widely, no species or even population of any species has been endangered or destroyed.  Impacts have, in fact, been largely local and, once identified, quickly and readily corrected.  If current usage patterns of road salts were, in fact, problematic, we have had many decades to see that evidence. 

Our specific comments on the draft report registered in the Fall of 2001 still apply.  Of these, we’d review just these few concerns we raised: 

• The scientific evaluation process was deeply flawed.  The final assessment report and its recommendations have been misrepresented as the product of assembled scientific experts.  This is incorrect.  In fact, Environment Canada specifically told the ERG members that their judgment on “toxic” or “not toxic” was not being sought.  The comment period was far too short for effective stakeholder review of such a massive document; we and some other stakeholders were proud to submit detailed, substantive comments; many others would have wanted to do so, but the timing was too short to review the 1,000-pages of collected scientific references – many of which were so obscure that Environment Canada could not even locate them until the public consultation was completed.  Many scientific reviews deal with evidence published in readily-available peer-reviewed journals.  Most of the studies in the “road salts” assessment were unpublished and not peer-reviewed; retrieving and reviewing this documentation was all but impossible in the brief public comment period.  Finally, the same scientists within Environment Canada who wrote the draft report reviewed the public comments.  They were hardly dispassionate and objective.  They ignored the criticisms that were most significant and the final report is no substantial improvement over the draft.  The “final” assessment report should be submitted to the Royal Society or another impartial, expert group for independent evaluation. 

• The independent reviewers should be given clear policy guidance as to what constitutes a harmful effect.  Nearly seven years after the process began, stakeholders still have no clear standard to judge whether the assessment report satisfies the statutory standard – the entire process is subjective and unscientific.  Fluxes occur in natural populations from month to month, season to season and year to year and can be dramatic and result from normal changes in climate and environment, totally independent of “road salts.”  None of the studies adequately controls for these confounding variables.  Species diversity and species numbers theoretically could be reduced by increasing chloride concentrations, but the assessment report has produced no clear taxonomy taking into account the level of reduction in populations or the duration of that reduction.  In short, an “adverse” effect is left to subjective judgment.  We can do better.  We should insist on specific and reasonable standards.  Often, natural environmental changes affect these statistics and often the recovery power of a species is sufficient to enable it to survive a period of adverse conditions and/or recolonize areas from which it has been eliminated.

• The independent reviewers should consider the level of environmental impact.  Every identified problem was essentially local.  No species was endangered.  No communities have disappeared.  Yes, individual organisms have died and some of those deaths may be linked to impacts of chlorides, but describing the death of a moose hit by a car as a “toxic” impact of road salt confuses “fatality” with “toxicity.”  Likewise, the assessment report introduces a new and novel charge – that “road salts” are ingested by one species of bird, become “intoxicated” and are slaughtered by automobiles and trucks because they are incapable of their usual flying ability.  Not only is the evidence offered of the most inadequate observational variety, but also the verbiage is alarmist.  Whatever the observed count of birds killed by motor vehicles and whatever the actual cause of those fatal collisions, keep in mind that in North America more than 80 million birds die each year flying into buildings and another four million fly into communications towers.  Does that mean that we consider buildings and electronic media “toxic”?  Such examples may explain why Environment Canada has not had its report independently “peer reviewed” nor has it explained why it refused to heed the criticisms of the independent toxicological experts it invited to review its draft.  Independent reviewers would put these issues in their proper perspective.

• The independent reviewers should examine road salts’ impacts on the entire Canadian environment.  Very little of that “environment” is in roadway rights-of-way where the impacts of road salts are most pronounced and chlorides might approach “toxic” concentrations.  An engineered ditch designed to capture and manage roadway runoff is neither “replacement habitat” for species that may or may not have occupied that particular spot before the highway was constructed nor a fair or reasonable facsimile of the “Canadian environment” nor even an appropriate “surrogate for concentrations that may be found in adjacent areas.” (assessment report at page 173).  Reviewers should be given liberty to determine, based on scientific criteria, whether the many confounding variables of the engineered roadway environment have been adequately controlled for before the additive impacts of road salts are assessed.

• The independent review needs to validate the models constructed by Environment Canada.  Critics took serious issue with them, but the authors ignored those significant criticisms.  To put it directly:  Environment Canada’s numbers just don’t add up.

• The independent review should separate historic incidents from those that fairly characterize current salt management practices and those likely to govern future storage and application of road salts.  CEPA is present- and future-oriented and offering as relevant evidence a pollution incident from the mid-1970s does not inform a decision on whether road salts should be termed “toxic” today.  It is not the material, after all, which is “toxic,” but its use.  We believe that these older incident locations are unlikely to represent a current environmental problem.  Practices change and improve.  We have made substantial progress (and we will make more!).  We would go further:  the independent review should examine today’s recommended salt management practices and determine whether they represent imposition of a “toxic” environmental impact.  We would be very surprised if a fair-minded, independent expert would conclude that modern snowfighting and salt management has “toxic” effects.

• “Toxicity” is related to exposures; this very basic question is handled particularly poorly in the assessment report.  Any substance can be toxic to any organism in sufficiently high doses for sufficiently long periods.  Characterizing the exposures and the risks associated with them need not be subject to guesswork.  The investigation of ferrocyanides by ERG member Art Letts is a model in that regard, using a Monte Carlo probabilistic exposure assessment.  From that calculation, Mr. Letts concluded that it was “unlikely” that ferrocyanide would cause any environmental problems.  The assessment report ignored its own expert and included as its conclusion that the risk was “uncertain.”  Mr. Letts submitted public comments condemning the staff bias and offering his very well informed expert opinion that “after intensive and extended review and discussion, I am convinced that the data are insufficient to meet the standard for CEPA toxicity.”  No other chapter author of the supporting documents used as thorough investigation as did Mr. Letts.  The independent review should include a review of the probabilities of a “toxic” exposure, not just the flood of “may” qualifiers rendering the science totally inconclusive to judge whether “road salts” are properly classed as “toxic” substances.

• Finally, given the lengthy list of enumerated “uncertainties” catalogued in the assessment report showing the weakness of the evidence, the recommendation for a “toxic” listing is too extreme:  lumping “road salts” with a group of chemicals that are well understood by the public to be “toxic.”[1]  These “uncertainties” are listed in each section of the assessment and supplemented by broad admissions of “data gaps in laboratory and field data that were used to characterize the use of road salts in Canada and assess the impact of road salts on different environmental endpoints”  (page 172) that include:  “the relevance of use of exposure data” from engineered environments to areas away from the roadway (page 173), the use of models (page 174), lack of continuous water quality monitoring data to record the fluctuations in chloride pulses (page 174), the distribution of species within the impacted environments studied (pages 174-75), and an admission that the case studies are not a balanced view of the overall economy (although the report admits but ignores the obvious defect that all of the case studies are selected are from known “problem” sites and not a representative sampling of the environment – page 175).  Thus, when the “Conclusions” talk about how using chloride deicers “can lead” to various adverse impacts, how various impacts “have been associated with exposure” to “road salts,” how “road salts may also affect” habitat and “while the ecological significance of many of the potential impacts cannot be quantified…” there is a “reasonable probability that road salts may be having” an adverse effect, therefore a “toxic” label is appropriate.  Placing side-by-side the enormous uncertainties that the assessment has accurately characterized the magnitude of the threat and contrasting the uncertain risk against the risk of interfering with the delivery of the known benefits of using “road salts” is an issue that cannot escape the attention of the government when it addresses its final determination on whether to label “road salts” as “toxic” substances.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Just as no federal, provincial or municipal agency using road salts intends to damage the environment, so, too, has Environment Canada pledged that it will not allow designation of “road salts” as “toxic” substances to jeopardize the provision of effective winter roadway maintenance, particularly to avoid an increase in traffic crashes and personal injuries.

If snowfighting agencies can inflict unintended consequences, so can Environment Canada!

The Salt Institute has not argued that Environment Canada intends to “ban” the use of “road salts.”  Designating “road salts” as “toxic” substances could have that unintended consequence, however.  If the assessment report concludes that “road salts” “may” inflict environmental harm, it is surely at least as likely that naming “road salts” as “toxic” substances “may” result in local actions which result in under-maintained roadways leading to economic harm to citizens and the economy and physical harm to motorists, passengers and would-be recipients of emergency assistance whose lifesaving rescue is thwarted by impassable roads.  We feel strongly the probability is far greater that human harm will result from a “toxic” designation than that this designation “may” prevent environmental harm.  Reasonable people may differ.  No one wants harm for either the environment or our citizens.  We ask:  is this risk really warranted?  We say: no, there is a better way.

HARM TO HUMANS

Snowfighting is a life-saving public service, essential to all Canadians.  Provision of quality winter maintenance is essential to meeting voters’ and taxpayers’ demand for responsive and responsible government.  Usually, snowfighting is the largest single item in a municipality’s budget.

Wasteful public spending diminishes every citizen’s quality of life because it diverts resources created in the productive private sector – workers’ wages and employers’ earnings – to unnecessary purposes.  This may be the least of the “harm to humans,” but it is real nevertheless.

Wasted Tax Dollars

Effective snowfighting demands a heavy investment.  For jurisdictions that have not made regular investments in equipment and training, bringing their operations into state-of-the-art shape will be a heavy, but cost-effective, investment.  Burdening ratepayers with costs of cost ineffective snowfighting solutions would have a major and adverse effect on local tax rates.  Through decades of study, examination and operating practice, provincial transport ministries and local government public works departments have determined that for most snowfighting responses, a combination of plowing and spreading salt is the most cost-effective solution.   Unless the benefits derived by naming “road salts” as “toxic” are very real, Environment Canada will face the accurate charge that it has imposed higher costs (some have termed it an “unfunded mandate”) on provincial and local governments, imposing a direct harm on taxpayers and drivers and those in their families and businesses.

While some “environmentalists,” with tongue barely in cheek, have suggested that the solution is not to drive during winter months, governments must be practical and provide a solution to winter roadway safety and mobility.  There are alternative, manmade chemicals to the natural chloride “road salts” included in Environment Canada’s assessment.  Many have been known for years and new products are introduced into the marketplace every year.  All of them cost more, many of them, multi-fold times more.  None has been assessed for environmental impacts.  None of them work as effectively in achieving safe driving conditions in the severe Canadian winter environment.  All of them would require local taxpayers to reach deeper and pay more.

Increasing the cost of snowfighting by requiring new equipment or materials may be justified in certain environmentally sensitive areas and certainly when it comes to improving salt management.  Proper salt management, in fact, is the solution, not the problem.  Labelling use of “road salts” as creating “toxic” outcomes will make delivery of cost-effective and lifesaving winter maintenance too costly. 

If municipalities are faced with reducing their use of “road salts” either to meet regulations that may be promulgated by Environment Canada or, more likely, promoted by single-minded “environmentalists” upset at the notion that “their” representatives would authorize purposeful release into the environment of a known “toxic” substance, then municipalities’ dismal choice of steep increases in local taxes or reduced roadway maintenance is a direct consequence of Environment Canada’s decision to list “road salts” as “toxic.”   Unintended, granted, but affixing the name “toxic” to the material risks tax hikes or service cuts.

The first example has already occurred, albeit south of the border.  In Watertown, NY, in early December, citizens protested location of a salt storage facility citing what they erroneously portrayed as Environment Canada’s listing of “road salts” as “toxic” agents.  When the fact that such a listing was only “proposed” and not “final” was pointed out, it weakened the opposition.  Whereas locating landfills and waste transfer stations has always raised NIMBY (not in my backyard) challenges, these are rare exceptions in terms of locating salt storage facilities.  We are aware of two environmental groups that are planning pesticide-style municipal campaigns with the clear intent of promoting outright bans or percentage reductions in road salt use. 

Liability costs and concerns

Along with the NIMBY concerns, agencies also face an escalation of their costs of legal defence against charges that they are discharging “toxic” materials and will pay higher insurance premiums if they are found to be handling “toxic” materials.

In an expensive irony, a “toxic” listing also would raise the likelihood that municipal governments will record higher legal defence costs if they choose not to continue with their use of salt; the reduced service levels will immediately raise the risks of crashes, injuries and deaths.  Multi-million dollar judicial awards have already established this risk is very real.  To our knowledge, the government has yet to conduct a serious examination of this critically important issue. There are literally dozens of lawsuits every year over the use or lack of use of road salts. There have been millions of dollars in civil awards by the Courts. There have been a number of serious senior court examinations (including the Supreme Court) that are completely relevant to the issues here. The Salt Institute of Canada submitted and distributed a thoughtful, and troubling, Gowlings legal opinion on this issue. Nowhere has the government addressed these serious legal and public policy issues.

What will be the impact of a toxic designation on municipal and provincial insurance rates? What will be the impact of the toxic designation on court awards and the standard of liability that will be applied?  It seems to us these are critically important questions that the Government needs to answer before it can possibly make an informed decision on this issue.

The Gazette notice trivializes the issue and would have the government guarantee that the outcome will not be increased accidents and impaired highway mobility.  If the unintended consequences that can fairly be predicted come to pass, the assurance that a “toxic” listing “will not compromise safety” could well become a politically embarrassing “empty promise”.  We would term “false bravado” the promise on Page 4344 of the December 1, 2001, Gazette notice which reads:

“Comments were made that road safety could be affected by declaring road salts as ‘CEPA Toxic’ and that Environment Canada had not conducted a thorough investigation of the implications regarding liabilities of road agencies. Environmental protection will not compromise safety, considering that several control options (Road Weather Information system, anti-icing and others) lead to reduced use of salt, while actually increasing roadway safety.” (emphasis added)

We agree that using modern snowfighting technologies offers the hope and expectation of further reducing lives lost and providing a firm guarantee of reliable highway access during winter months.  But this has nothing to do with a “toxic” listing.  We expect many of these technologies to be utilized by snowfighting professionals; their use may even be impeded as agencies are forced by an aroused public to abandon what professionals recognize as the best solutions, such as RWIS and anti-icing. 

Many small road owners cannot afford or find the means to justify these investments, but, then again, these agencies are not usually responsible for the multi-lane freeway systems which use the greater amounts of salt to assure the high level of service such roads require. Most of the large road owners have already invested. So the real issue – completely ignored in the Gazette notice – is:  how will a toxic designation change road owner behaviour?   Nowhere does the Gazette notice consider the implications of this behavioural shift for municipal liability and insurance.   Nor is it clear that alternatives will impose lower environmental costs.  As agencies rush to consider “alternatives,” what are the projected health impacts of sand on air quality and its impact on the incidence and severity of respiratory illnesses? (We’re thinking of humans, but perhaps even animals might suffer lung impairment). What about the bio-oxygen demand imposed by some of the alternatives?  What about the increased collisions with animals caused by diminished roadway surface friction? (Again, we put aside the increased number of motorists and pedestrians endangered by vehicles with impaired traction). 

The liability concern is not that Environment Canada intends to impose additional costs by expanding the liability of handling “road salts,” but the uncertainties in how the courts will interpret liability in the event these substances are declared “toxic.”  Completely unpredictable is how road owners will attempt to minimize these liabilities, what changed behaviours a listing will produce.

Economic Loss – jobs, sales, exports

Lower service levels are unacceptable today.  Balanced against the known high costs of reducing highway salt use or switching to an alternative chemical are the unseen risks of economic loss.  These are well-studied and –accepted, but no governmental jurisdiction knowingly courts such economic disaster because of the certain electoral consequences. 

Best known among the costs to the economy at large, are the threat to the jobs and livelihoods of Canadian workers.  Note, not just the actual wages lost and lost productivity, but the very real threat that in a globally-competitive economy, some other country is likely to attract the investment dollars for plant expansion and new jobs if Canadian employers cannot be assured that the highway infrastructure will protect their international competitiveness.  Name a business or industry that is not dependent on reliable, year-round highway access.  Workers have to get to work.  Raw materials must reach a manufacturing plant.  Finished products must be shipped on time.  Shoppers prevented from reaching retail outlets don’t spend as much.  Economists have studied the effects.  They are real.  And massive.   And unacceptable.

Service levels must be maintained.  A 1998 study by the economic consulting firm Standard and Poor’s DRI examined the impact of a major snowstorm that would immobilize Ontario, Quebec and a dozen U.S. states.  This was a sophisticated study dealing with workers’ wages, retail sales and federal and provincial tax revenues. 

Workers’ wages lost.   In the event of a temporary shut down of the majority of industry, the loss of employee income would be limited to workers paid by the hour, since salaried workers would still collect their annual wage, and the work would be made-up at a later date. S&P/DRI derived statistics on employee compensation from Statistics Canada’s Matrix 4374. The data in this matrix represents unadjusted average weekly earnings (including overtime), of employees paid by the hour, for firms of all sizes by industry, for the 1980 Canadian Standard Industrial Classification (SIC). Statistics are derived from a monthly sample survey of firms, institutions and organizations of all sizes and covers all industries except agriculture, fishing, trapping, private households, religious organizations and the military.  All statistics used in these calculations were taken from raw (non-seasonally adjusted) data. Statistics Canada information is available at a monthly frequency, and the ratios calculated above were based on data from November through March. This methodology ensured a measure of total wages for hourly employees for the winter months only. In the event of a shutdown, of course, not all essential services will be closed. To account for the operation of essential services under a skeleton staff, S&P/DRI constructed scaling factors, classifying as essential services: local and interurban passenger transit, water transportation, communication, and health services.  The study assumed that 25 percent of the staff in these industries would be working.  Finally, to make sure these calculations did not overstate the impact, the study recognized that although hourly employees lose income during the days in which the area is shut down, a portion of this income would be regained from overtime.  Income not regained will be lost due to a permanent decline in demand and/or production being shifted to outside the region.  Income was not assumed to be regained uniformly across the economy, but to vary depending on each industry. Regain factors were constructed for each industry to account for income made-up due to overtime. In addition, it was assumed that a portion of this overtime work was paid at time and a half.

Even with all these adjustments to prevent over-calculation, the study found that for every day of such winter immobility, Ontario workers would lose $110,240,000 in wages and Quebec workers, $116,390,000.  That much more in workers’ paychecks buys a lot of life’s necessities, adds to the quality of Canadian life and has been a major reason why taxpayers support investments in quality snowfighting.

Retail sales lost.  S&P/DRI recognized in its study of the costs of a shutdown that there would be two types of impact on the retail trade sector. The initial impact would come through the loss of demand on the days of the shutdown. Whether or not this lost trade is recouped by purchases made after the state returns to normal operations will depend on the nature of the retail trade. Retail trade involving the purchase of immediately consumable items, such as restaurant and confectionery items will probably be lost permanently. Although the purchase of more durable items will be postponed until after the state has returned to normal operations, these purchases will be made nonetheless.

S&P/DRI determined that retail trade information available from Statistics Canada is not sufficiently disaggregated to identify the specific business sectors that would experience a permanent loss of business from a province-wide shutdown.  Since, the US Department of Commerce used to collect detailed information on state retail trade activity, this unpublished information allowed for estimated sales of retail stores by kind of business for the 12 U.S. states included in the study, providing general purchasing patterns.  In calculating lost retail trade data, S&P/DRI used the retail trade by kind of business from 1990 to 1995 for the months November through March to construct shares of retail trade attributable to each kind of business for the snowbelt states. The averages of these shares of retail trade were then applied to current retail trade statistics for the provinces of Ontario and Quebec to provide an estimate of current retail trade by kind of business.

Three retail trade sectors were identified as subject to permanent loss of trade due to provincial shutdown: general merchandise stores, eating and drinking places, and gasoline service stations. Scaling factors for these three retail trade businesses were established to account for the share of lost trade not recouped after the state returned to normal operations.  There is no reason to think that these assumptions based on U.S. figures would not provide a rough approximation of the impact in Ontario and Quebec.

S&P/DRI estimated the 1998 losses in retail sales for a single day of weather-induced closures in Ontario at $45,980,000 and, in Quebec, $39,530,000. 

“Ripple effect.”  The loss of income to governments from wages forfeited due to the shutdown has a ripple effect in the economy. All of the people who lost income as a result of the shutdown would have spent the majority of that income in the local economy. Lost sales in the local economy will amount to a potential loss of income by most retailers and their employees. The impact ripples further as retailers and employees curtail their purchasing activity.  To measure this ripple effect, DRI employed its Macroeconomic Model of the Canadian Economy. The DRI Model incorporates the best insights of many theoretical approaches to the business cycle: Keynesian, neoclassical, monetarist, supply-side, and rational expectations. In addition, the DRI Model embodies the major properties of the long-term growth models presented by James Tobin, Robert Solow, Edmund Phelps, and others.  Multipliers were obtained for changes of income on retail trade and income by running an impact analysis through DRI’s Model.  These multipliers were then applied to the provincial direct impacts to calculate indirect impacts on consumption and general retail trade.  Indirect tax effects were calculated using the indirect income measures and the tax revenue coefficients.

Reduced tax revenues.  Whatever the virtues of reducing tax rates, it is calamitous when governments fail to receive anticipated tax receipts, creating painful revenue shortfalls forcing curtailment of other programs or deficit spending.  Yet we all know that reduced economic activity – workers sitting idly at home, snowbound and shoppers unable to navigate their way to shopping malls – results in reduced tax revenues.   Economists can measure and model the tax revenue impacts of various scenarios.  For this study, S&P/DRI calculated the reduced tax revenues to the federal and provincial governments using the net income loss and the provincial government revenue coefficients for the fourth and first quarters. 

A single day snow-caused shutdown in Ontario would cost the federal treasury $24,400,000 and federal revenues from Quebec for a single day of closures would be reduced by $25,760,000.   The Province of Ontario would forego a further $21,790,000 and Quebec, $32,050,000. 

These are major impacts, but only exemplary of what happens when the economy steps into a sinkhole of non-performance.  Other sectors would certainly be affected with the fiscal impacts being additive.

Of course, the salt industry would be negatively impacted.  Its workers are relatively few in the scheme of the Canadian economy, but they are usually considered well-paying, secure jobs, often jobs at the largest employer in their communities and thus offering the potential for massive secondary “ripple effects” from layoffs at salt mines.  These mines are also major exporters and contribute a healthy positive balance to Canada’s balance of trade.  Should this action by the government of Canada “jump the border” and precipitate difficulties for highway agencies in the U.S. to use salt, it would dry up a major Canadian export – and the jobs used to create those exports. 

Some businesses and industries are particularly susceptible to damage from snow interruptions.   Transportation companies depend on reliable delivery times to earn their livelihoods.  Automobile assembly plants, particularly in recent decades in combating imports from outside North America, have relied on “just in time” delivery schedules, in effect, “warehousing on wheels.”  If a promised delivery misses its delivery window by more than a few hours, an entire assembly plant with its thousands of workers can be forced to shut down.  The impacts multiply, industry by industry.

Then there is the invisible risk:  the risk of foregone growth … of plant expansions foregone, jobs never created, tax base stagnation.  Corporations and even “main street” merchants examine the potential return on their investments.  Greater risk or lower reward and an investment might not be made.  A factory expansion might be made in Wisconsin’s Kenosha or Two Rivers rather than Ontario’s Kingston or Quebec’s Trois Riveres.  A new shopping mall might be built in Buffalo, not Burlington.  If reliable roadway access isn’t a priority concern for government, it will always be a priority concern for those whose investment returns depend directly on the performance of highway infrastructure.

One can dismiss a discussion of dollars as a parochial concern of “black-hatted business,” but the truth is this is an issue for every Canadian citizen, every Canadian taxpayer and every Canadian voter.  It affects not just the workers who are able to earn less or even who are laid-off and their families, but their communities and the future economic security of their children who may be asked to pay the price for today’s “economic” decisions.   These are quality-of-life issues with vast potential to harm not only our economy, but also our citizens…and our future as a nation.

Risk of export retaliation.  The salt and potash industries, in particular, are significant Canadian export industries. Most exports are destined for the U.S. market, a market terribly susceptible to the use of trade instruments against Canadian export industries. With a toxic designation, these industries are highly vulnerable to trade challenges. The reality is that U.S. laws define a toxic designation in accordance with the common and defined use of the term. Americans will impose values on Canadian products in accordance with their correct understanding of the term toxic. Jobs and industries will be threatened for absolutely no reason.

Public safety risks – to drivers, passengers and those relying on essential highway-delivered services

Safety as well as mobility can be jeopardized by poor highway design and construction or by operating procedures which allow unsafe driving conditions such as construction work zones, incident management or, of particular importance in this context, weather emergencies. 

In short, salt is used to keep highways safe and passable.  No one doubts this commonsense observation.  Research in North America and Europe confirms those savings and document convincingly that, using salt, snowfighting crews can reduce accidents sharply.  A study by the Marquette University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Accident Analysis of Ice Control Operations, released in 1992 documented injury accident reduction of 88.3%.   The authors calculated that "As a winter maintenance service, de-icing pays for itself within the first 25 minutes after the first hour that salt is spread on two-lane highways . . .. Then, during the first four hours after the hour of application of salt, the direct road user benefits were $6.50 for every $1.00 spent on direct maintenance costs for the operation." As soon as 71 vehicles drove over the highway, the average direct costs were offset by direct benefits. The study found that costs related to accidents, including medical expenses, emergency services, workplace costs, travel delay, property damage, and administration and legal expenses decrease by 88 percent after application of deicing salt.  Earlier studies in German and subsequent studies in Scandinavia buttress the findings. 

Drivers aren’t the only humans who are harmed when their vehicle crashes.  There are often innocent passengers or drivers and passengers in other vehicles.  A driver who loses control on an ice-covered street can strike law-abiding pedestrians.  Precious children lose life, limbs and bright futures when a school bus plunges from a slippery roadway.   A heart attack victim may expire during an ambulance’s tardy response to an emergency call due to slick surface conditions.   Families can be devastated, its members standing together in the snow watching their home burn beyond habitability because the fire engine couldn’t navigate poorly maintained roads.  These are the major reasons, we believe, that the Canada Safety Council has been so vocal in demanding assurances that no action by Environment Canada jeopardise the safety of Canadians using their roadways.  Here’s what the Canada Safety Council says on its webpage, http://www.safety-council.org/info/traffic/winterdr.htm:

Road Conditions Top Concern for Winter Driving

Canadian winters bring snow, ice and cold. But as long as the roads have been cleared and de-iced, most Canadians feel safe driving on them. This was the finding of a national survey commissioned by the Canada Safety Council.

·          The Decima poll asked respondents to what extent they agreed with the statement, "I feel safe driving in winter as long as the roads are plowed, salted or sanded." Close to half (46 per cent) gave the top rating of 10 out of 10. The average was 8.4 out of 10.
 

·          The quality of winter road maintenance received a good grade. Forty-four per cent of respondents rated the snow removal and ice control on their most frequently traveled roads 8 out of 10 or higher. The average rating overall was a respectable 6.9 out of 10.

·          When asked what contributes to their feeling of safety on winter roads, a majority of drivers (56 per cent) mentioned factors related to the road (plowed, clear, salted, sanded, no ice). Quebecers and Atlantic Canadians mentioned road conditions most frequently (both around 63 per cent), British Columbians least frequently (42 per cent).

- Human factors such as driving skills, other drivers, speed, experience and drunk drivers were mentioned somewhat less frequently, by 41 per cent of respondents. Human factors rated highest among those who drive the most (300+ km per week). Regionally, British Columbians mentioned human factors most often (mentioned by 63 per cent), while the lowest mention was in Manitoba and Saskatchewan (31 per cent of respondents).

- Vehicle-related factors, including maintenance, tires and type of vehicle, were mentioned by 32 per cent of respondents nation-wide. About 39 per cent of Quebecers mentioned these factors, compared to only 25 per cent of British Columbians.

"It’s obvious Canadians place a very high value on having their roads cleared in winter," says Canada Safety Council president Emile Therien. "To the average winter driver, the number one safety issue is the condition of the roadway."

Authorities responsible for road maintenance have been sensitive to this, according to Therien. For instance, the Transportation Association of Canada, whose members include road maintenance agencies, is working on a salt management guide for winter road maintenance.

Therien points out that many drivers lack the defensive driving skills to deal with poor road conditions and unsafe actions by others. Extra caution is needed during winter weather, particularly when roads are slippery because they have not yet been plowed, salted or sanded. A 1992 study from Marquette University in Milwaukee found collisions were up to eight times more frequent before de-icing than after.

The Canada Safety Council estimates that 85 per cent of all collisions and related injuries relate in some way to driver behaviour. This includes impaired driving, speeding, running red lights, and non-use (or improper use) of seat belts or child restraints. However, roadway conditions are also critical.

Results of the Decima survey are based on telephone interviews conducted between May 1 and May 12, 1998, and are considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

Driver Demographics

·          The youngest and oldest age groups drive the least. A significant number said they do not drive at all: 24 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 24 and 35 per cent of those 70 and over.

·          The employed and self-employed drive the most. Of those employed full time, 59 per cent drive 300 km or more per week.

Roads Most Traveled

·          Canada-wide, 75 per cent of respondents said they drive on city streets frequently. Over half (56 per cent) said they drive frequently on highways.

·          Rural roads are least traveled - except in Atlantic Canada, where 65 per cent said they use rural roads frequently.

Please excuse the extensive use of another organization’s “comments,” but they cannot be emphasized too strongly.  This public opinion poll was conducted in 1998.  Canadians feel just as strongly today that a major governmental priority must be to reduce the human toll of highway crashes.  Using “road salts” makes that goal achievable.  As the salt industry is proud to say:  “Salt Saves Lives!”

ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVES TO "ROAD SALTS"

Reading news accounts after Environment Canada’s carefully crafted “communications strategy” was launched at a November 30 news conference offers an insight into what we might expect if the government proceeds to label “road salts” as “toxic” substances.  Every effort was made to avoid the negative emotional response that greeted the August 2000 news conference which led to Environment Canada and Health Canada having to mount a counter-offensive to sooth a public concerned with specious claims that “road salts” cause cancer in humans.  This time, not a word was said about “toxic” or “poison” – by Environment Canada or by salt manufacturers, governmental transportation agencies and other transportation-related businesses.  Yet, for all the planning and preparation of media kits and stakeholder information campaigns, the media took the story of a proposed “listing” and headlined from coast to coast that Environment Canada has declared salt “toxic” and even a “poison.” 

Most interesting among the responses were the confident assurances of many local public works officials who assured reporters seeking a response to the Gazette proposal that a listing might be a problem somewhere else, but not in their community.  “Our agency,” they intoned, “is using proper management practices.”  Or, “Our agency has tested alternatives such as magnesium chloride” just in case the government labels “road salts” as “toxic” and alternatives must be used.  Of course, the “alternative” would be a listed “toxic” as well; this will come as a big surprise to many who have quietly assumed Environment Canada would leave them some “escape hatch” if they scuttle salt.  No such luck.

In fact, from the outset of the environmental assessment, Environment Canada has maintained that limiting the scope of the assessment to the four inorganic chloride salts was proper, regardless of the fact that some agent is surely required for effective winter maintenance and none of the alternatives, not sand, gravel, urea, various acetates and organic biomass-derived deicers have had an environmental assessment.  Anecdotally, much is known about the threats to air and water from sand and high-BOD liquids, but Environment Canada proposes to shift the market towards these substances, none of which has been labelled “toxic” (except, arguably, the PM-10 particulates in sand), inviting not only the disruption of massive shifts towards use of these “non-toxic” alternatives, but the heartbreaking, even embarrassing, retreat that will surely be ordered when these substances are finally assessed as alternatives to ‘road salts.”  Add that environmental cost to the up-front premium price and heads will roll when this naiveté is revealed.

POLITICAL BACKLASH IS INEVITABLE IF "ROAD SALTS" ARE LABELLED "TOXIC"

No amount of word-smithing and no interminable use of accountability-deflecting “may’s” and “might’s” can prevent the near-immediate and inevitable consequences of linking the word “toxic” to “road salts.”  These are not exotic substance that exists in double-hulled containers in locked cabinets within secured industrial facilities.  These are approved human foods; approved animal foods; approved fertilizers for crops used to feed the livestock that becomes our dinner entrée.  These aren’t some chemical with a technical name that scares people half to death.  No, we grow these crystals in our elementary schools, we touch them daily – and we die if we don’t eat them.  Small wonder the public reads the dictionary and finds that “toxic” means “poison” and reacts as if this is an important declaration.  It is.  Has Environment Canada discovered something new about this relatively innocuous, even life-saving, substance that should be cause for concern?  No.  Environment Canada essentially confirmed the TRB report released in 1992 in terms of the environmental fate and consequences of “road salts.”

What is a wonder is not that people are interpreting this proposal as assigning what they thought was an environmental irritant to the “toxic” category with benzene, dioxins, and other like environmental “bad boys.”  No, the wonder is that Environment Canada ever considered that it could be otherwise.  It is no wonder that people consider “toxic” to be a “skull and crossbones”-type designation.   It always has been.  No simple declaration by the government that “toxic” is bureaucratese for “subject to federal regulation” is likely to prevail. 

If Environment Canada had been able to succeed in convincing the public that the word “toxic,” has another, less objectionable meaning than that in the dictionary, the word “toxic” itself would have been so devalued as to lose its present utility in raising alarm and concern.  There is no public interest, either for environment or public health, in destroying the plain and powerful meaning of the word “toxic.” 

Who could pump themselves up to a frenzy about the use of a substance used in great quantities and studied in minute detail over more than half a century and whose taxonomy is based on a report that cannot claim to have discovered any significant new evidence (and the one alleged “new” impact, on cardoon finches, is brought on the scantiest of observational “data.”)?

The public is not fooled.  “Toxic” means “poison.”  Elaborate public communications efforts through FCM and TAC to downplay the word and insist that the verbiage was unimportant compared to the very, very important priority that should be accorded upgrading salt management practices, have failed.  Failed utterly.  The public is concerned.

What “toxic” means to the public

The dictionary definition of “toxic” is “poison”  The word derives from both Latin and Greek words for poison.  A “toxic” effect is one caused by or affected by a “toxin.”  The Encyclopedia Britannica makes it clear that toxins are “any substance poisonous to an organism.”  The Government of Canada can, of course, create – and has created – its own statutory definition, but an Act of Parliament does not amend public perception.  The public, including, as we’ve all seen, newspaper headline writers, equate a “toxic” substance with a “poison.”  For good reason.

Likewise, “toxic” is a defined term in the statutes of other countries like the U.S., the U.K. and the E.U.  Other governments reserve the term “toxic” for substances that the public might understand really are toxic, quite unlike the proposed label for “road salts” in Canada.  In the U.S., for example, “The term ‘toxic’ shall apply to any substance (other than a radioactive substance) which has the capacity to produce personal injury or illness to man through ingestion, inhalation or absorption through any body surface.”  U.S. EPA established regulatory levels for toxic chemicals based on health-based concentration thresholds and a dilution/ attenuation factor that was developed using a subsurface fate and transport model.  From acenaphthene and arsenic to vinyl chloride and xylenes, the list of “toxic” substances is an unbroken list of chemicals of which small quantities can cause big problems.  One characteristic of U.S. statutes is establishment of a “threshold quantity” capturing the severity of the hazard, the likelihood of accidental releases and the magnitude of exposure of such accidental releases.  Nowhere is there contemplated a situation where there will be purposeful releases of toxic materials.  Nowhere is there contemplated that releases in quantities of more than 5-50 kilograms would be exempt from regulatory limits or requirements to alert local public health authorities and/or firefighters.

Other Canadian legislation defines toxic consistent with the dictionary definition.  The Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act equates “toxic” and “poisonous.” (Class 6).   The Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act also defines “toxic chemicals”[2] in conventional terms.  These terms are the same for all international signatories of the Convention.

The public is confused as well.  People were led to believe that the process to produce the proposed listing was open and transparent.  It has been anything but that!  The public might have expected that the significant basic criticisms of the science base for the proposal have been dealt with thoroughly and honestly; rather, they have been papered over.  The public might have thought that the ultimate resolution of the issue reflected the views of those participating in the public consultation; instead, the very Environment Canada evaluators writing the report and deciding on its conclusions were also charged with directing, determining the relevance and responding to the public and scientific comments.

Unlike the chemicals residing on the secured shelves of chemical companies and industrial plants, “road salts” are used directly by municipal and provincial governments, local councils, local works departments.  They are making choices on behalf of their local citizens.  They know their citizens value safety.  They value local businesses and seeing workers with paychecks going into the bank on a regular basis.  They know how had they’ve worked to fine-tune their snowfighting practices to reduce any environmental insult from “road salts.”

The government needs to ask itself whether a “toxic” listing will help provincial and local governments changed with protecting the environment, protecting the lives of their citizens and those who use their roadways, and protecting their very economic viability or whether some less drastic measure would be more helpful.

There is little or no environmental benefit that can be derived by labelling “road salts” as “toxic.”  Local public sentiment has forced salt “bans” in local communities in the past; they last until the first snowstorm – or until the first election after the first snowstorm.  The public has been weighing the costs of winter maintenance and environmental protection for generations.   Nothing new in this assessment will change that economic calculus.  Deicing with sodium chloride provides $60 in benefits for every dollar invested.  Even if the shaky evidence offered in the assessment report were a fair characterization of actual Canadian environmental conditions – which it definitely is not – the best that anyone, Environment Canada, Transport Canada or anyone else, can do is to continue to hasten the adoption of new technologies and techniques within a basic snowfighting strategy keyed to continued use of “road salts.”   That is what the Transportation Research Board concluded in 1992.  That is what Environment Canada’s evidence should have persuaded it to conclude in its final report.   But it didn’t.  And, so, the decision becomes one for elected politicians to translate the public good and fix a policy that reduces environmental risk – and reduces the risk that some precipitous declaration could upset a world-class winter maintenance strategy which Canada models for other transportation agencies around the world.

THE "SOLUTION"

The PSL2 “road salts” assessment has helped to catalyze a commitment by snowfighting agencies across Canada to do a better job in managing salt.  Many have pointed out that the problems identified in the older-referenced studies cited in the assessment report have, in fact, been corrected.  Certainly, snowfighting practices are better today than in decades past.  In fact, the decade of the 1990s, arguably, saw more progress than any other in the history of snowfighting with new equipment and related techniques such as anti-icing which are expected to continue the long declining trend in the amount of salt used on Canadian highways relative to the amount of traffic using those highways during the winter months.

This is a very significant point.  Despite the fact that our road system is growing rapidly, and service levels double every three years, the amount of salt used to maintain these roadways has been relatively flat – and clearly declining in terms of the amounts of salt used compared to the volume of traffic being handled.  Rather than convince the public that provincial and municipal roadway agencies are an environmental threat, Environment Canada should be commending their progress and highlighting the positive achievements of those who have reduced the environmental impact of performing winter maintenance.

At the same time, we recognize that improvements can and should be made.  The salt industry happily accepts the challenge of assisting in this national effort.  Training operators and supervisors in snowfighting skills, including the proper use of road salts, should be a priority.  Provincial transport ministries should not only train their own workers, but also take a leadership role in providing training to municipal workers and to contractors’ personnel.

The Salt Institute has provided training, including free “Sensible Salting” training materials, for our customer agencies – for more than thirty years.  We are formal partners with the National Association of Local Technology Assistance Programs to encourage better snowfighting.  In fact, we feel we can assert without fear of contradiction, that our program for salt management is as environmentally-motivated and –sensitive as that envisioned by Environment Canada.   And, we feel our customers, represented in TAC and the Canadian Public Works Association and various leagues of municipalities and counties, share our concern to improve the environmental management of salt.

So, let’s get on with it.  And, let’s get on with it without the distraction – and unnecessary hazards – of making any decision of the question of the “toxicity” of “road salts.”  We are confident that when Environment Canada observes the sincerity and effectiveness of the “sensible salting” approach to incorporate the latest and best technologies in our fight for environmentally-sensitive storage and application of “road salts,” that it will ultimately realize that this approach will prevent any possible “toxic” environmental impacts.  Environment Canada “wins” by keeping the hammer of future action available, and the public wins by getting safe roads, a healthy economy and reduced environmental impacts from “road salts” as new salt management techniques are adopted.

We encourage the government to embrace this win-win resolution.

Sincerely,

Richard I. King
Executive Director

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