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Rethinking Ice Control Informed Salt Management Supports Due Diligence
November, 2008
By Barbara Carss
Wintertime can bring safety and environmental interests into conflict on outdoor parking lots, sidewalks and other pedestrian walkways. To prevent slip-and-fall mishaps and guard against liability, property owners/managers and snow removal contractors can be tempted to apply excessive amounts of salt and/or other de-icing products that eventually seep into the soil, water table and watersheds, harming ecosystems and damaging property along the way.
In response, Waterloo Region - a southwestern Ontario municipality with approximately 500,000 residents - has devised a salt management program that holds the promise of insurance premium reductions for participants who adopt a process for reducing reliance on salt.
"For us, it's basically about groundwater protection," says Leanne Lobe, Supervisor of Source Water Protection Planning for Waterloo Region. "We have roughly 125 wells providing about 80% of the Region's water supply and, across all of our wells, we're detecting increased levels of chloride and sodium, which are the two elements in rock salt. The increase has been mostly attributable to winter maintenance."
Smart about salt( was launched in the winter of 2008, initially with a focus on property owners/managers and contractors in Waterloo Region, but Regional staff are now working with the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Ottawa and Landscape Ontario - a trade association for the horticultural and snow removal sectors - to examine the potential to expand the program to a wider area. Thus far, five contractors in Waterloo have completed the program requirements and obtained certification.
To do so, program participants are expected to evaluate their current snow/ice removal practices, monitor and document materials used, make predictive use of weather data, assess sites and look for possible alternative solutions for controlling slippery conditions. They will have to train their staff in salt and ice management, conduct self-audits that will be subject to random review, and submit annual reports to the Region.
Certified companies will be entitled to display the smart about salt( logo and use it in their marketing. Ultimately, the program designers envision a day when many property owners will specify that contractors must be certified, and Waterloo Region is now considering contractors' certification credentials among the criteria it has established for assessing bids for the maintenance of its own properties.
TIE-IN WITH SUSTAINABILITY GOALS
"For the facility side, we understand this might not be as big a driver. Shoppers aren't necessarily going to choose a particular mall or supermarket because they use less salt in the parking lot," Lobe acknowledges. "But hopefully it will tie into companies' overall environmental management systems or philosophies. It's also just to demonstrate leadership."
For their part, collaborators from BOMA Ottawa and Landscape Ontario see prospective environmental, due diligence and operational savings benefits. The program's emphasis on tracking how much salt is used, and under what conditions, is in sync with BOMA Canada's environmental performance monitoring and benchmarking exercise, BOMA BESt (see Canadian Property Management, October 2008), which requires participants to measure and report use of harmful products/chemicals as part of a comprehensive survey of management practices. Correspondingly, site assessment, treatment plans and documentation are all practices that Landscape Ontario recommends in the standardized contract it developed for the industry.
"We are looking for ways of collecting information, collecting contacts and collecting advice to help our members to do things that are outside the BOMA BESt context, but fit the philosophy," says Dean Karakasis, Executive Director of BOMA Ottawa. "BOMA BESt's philosophy is: when you measure, you can act. So this complements that. It certainly fits in, in terms of helping to manage the use of chemical products. Beyond that, even members who don't do BOMA BESt, might do this."
BEST PRACTICES
Mitigating salt contamination is obviously in keeping with the values of an organization that represents horticulturists, arbourists, landscapers and landscape designers, but Landscape Ontario's endorsement is also based on the interests of the snow removal segment of its membership. The association's insurer, Lombard Insurance, has added its support for the program - particularly the monitoring and documentation elements that could provide evidence for disputing or defending against claims.
"The end point of this is a reduction of salt, but the process itself is about an elevation of professionalism, an elevation of documentation and implementing a best practice. It's actually a training program for best practices," says Tony DiGiovanni, Executive Director of Landscape Ontario. "We looked at it and said: This is fabulous. We'll embrace this and promote it across Ontario and also across Canada eventually."
The association plans to add a requirement for third party review before rolling out a broader program for its membership. This is similar to requirements for Landscape Ontario's voluntary pesticide/integrated pest management program accreditation program, in which experts from the University of Guelph fulfill the audit role (www.ontarioipm.com).
"It adds a little bit more rigour, which was what the insurance company wanted," DiGiovanni reports. "There will be some insurance benefits to [Landscape Ontario] members who are accredited, and Lombard also insures a number of building owners and property managers so that could possibly mean some opportunities for certified site owners."
INTERTWINED MARKETS
DiGiovanni suggests it will be easier to get snow removal contractors involved if BOMA members create the market demand for the service. Meanwhile, Karakasis confirms that market potential exists.
"In general, there is always interest in any new environmental initiative. This just fits into the bigger category of things like rainwater capture and all the other ideas that people have for reducing carbon footprint," he observes. "I think it's an association's role to find ideas. If you have 10 buildings you will typically end up with 10 different ideas, but the ideal is to find one, two or three things can apply to all of those buildings and is easy for them to adopt."
Ottawa experiences colder winter temperatures, on average, than do municipalities in southwestern Ontario where salt use tends to be most prevalent. Sodium chloride, the least costly de-icing product, does not melt ice or snow in temperatures below -13( C (9( F) so Karakasis cautions that BOMA Ottawa wants to ensure smart about salt( will help property owners/managers respond to different climatic conditions.
Nevertheless, elements of the program - such as the requirement that participants critically assess chronically icy areas and look for physical/structural causes and solutions - are simply good management practices that can apply universally.
"That's the part of the process where they are trying to identify opportunities, to be a bit creative and do some problem solving," Lobe reflects. "For sure, we are trying to get operators to consider brine and we get into alternative products a little bit, but our fundamental position is: Regardless of what chemical they are using, if they're not applying it appropriately, they are using too much."
For more information, see the Region of Waterloo's web site at www.region.waterloo.on.ca/smartaboutsalt.
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