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CREEK CONDITIONS
Road salt killing salmon eggs, study finds BRENT RICHTER
brichter@nsnews.com
The advice for B.C.’s salmon is same your cardiologist is giving you: Time to cut back on the sodium chloride.
A new study is showing the salt municipalities use to keep people safe on the roads in cold, wet weather is likely killing future generations of B.C. salmon. It was the Stoney Creek Streamkeepers in Burnaby who first began monitoring for salt levels and noticed spikes coming in the wintertime. They raised the issue with scientists at UBC, SFU, BCIT and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, all of which are now collaborating on a study that is quickly confirming that the substance we use to keep our roads safe can be lethal for salmonids. For the last four years, local Streamkeepers groups have been logging data from 40 water quality monitoring stations on 30 Lower Mainland creeks, which capture everything from temperature to electrical conductivity, which is a proxy for salinity, every 10 minutes. B.C.’s provincial guidelines state that fresh water should never have more than 600 milligrams of chloride per litre of water, but the data shows spikes much higher than that in the wintertime, lasting for about 24 hours at a time. Continued on A22
West Vancouver Streamkeepers co-chair Keith Pelletier examines conditions on Cypress Creek along with UBC grad student Clare Kilgour. A new study reveals that road salt is likely contributing to salmon mortality. PAUL MCGRATH / NSN